The Babadook’s Jennifer Kent to helm Alice + Freda Forever adaptation

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Deadline is reporting that THE BABADOOK director Jennifer Kent has been tapped by Sidney Kimmel Entertainment and Berlanti Production to write and direct a film adaptation of the 2014 Alexis Coe non-fiction book Alice + Freda Forever. Berlanti president says Kent was her first choice to bring the true-crime lesbian love story to the big screen.

Book description from Amazon:

In 1892, America was obsessed with a teenage murderess, but it wasn't her crime that shocked the nation—it was her motivation. Nineteen-year-old Alice Mitchell had planned to pass as a man in order to marry her seventeen-year-old fiancée Freda Ward, but when their love letters were discovered, they were forbidden from ever speaking again.
 
Freda adjusted to this fate with an ease that stunned a heartbroken Alice. Her desperation grew with each unanswered letter—and her father’s razor soon went missing. On January 25, Alice publicly slashed her ex-fiancée’s throat. Her same-sex love was deemed insane by her father that very night, and medical experts agreed: This was a dangerous and incurable perversion. As the courtroom was expanded to accommodate national interest, Alice spent months in jail—including the night that three of her fellow prisoners were lynched (an event which captured the attention of journalist and civil rights activist Ida B. Wells). After a jury of "the finest men in Memphis" declared Alice insane, she was remanded to an asylum, where she died under mysterious circumstances just a few years later.

I still haven't seen THE BABADOOK yet, but I've heard fantastic things about the horror film, and based on the reviews I've read, I think Jennifer Kent is a great fit for ALICE + FREDA FOREVER. Who do you want to play Alice and Freda?