Anonymous Content and Higher Ground will produce a feature film adaptation of Baldwin: A Love Story, Nicholas Boggs’ biography of James Baldwin.
Anonymous Content has closed a deal to option the book, along with a deal for Boggs and his partner, Booker Prize-winning author Marlon James, to adapt it for the screen.
What is ‘Baldwin: A Love Story’ about?
Per the announcement, “Baldwin: A Love Story, the first major biography of James Baldwin in three decades, reveals how profoundly the writer’s personal relationships shaped his life and work. Drawing on newly uncovered archival material and original research and interviews, this spellbinding book tells the overlapping stories of Baldwin’s most sustaining intimate and artistic relationships: with his mentor, the Black American painter Beauford Delaney; with his lover and muse, the Swiss painter Lucien Happersberger; and with his collaborators, the famed Turkish actor Engin Cezzar and the iconoclastic French artist Yoran Cazac, whose long-overlooked significance as Baldwin’s last great love is explored in these pages for the first time.”
The book, a New York Times bestseller and a Time and Atlantic Top 10 Book of 2025, has also been named a New York Times Notable Book and an Amazon Best Book of the Year. It won the NBCC John Leonard Prize and the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, and has been shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.
Boggs said, “I couldn’t be more honored and thrilled to be collaborating with Anonymous Content and Higher Ground to bring James Baldwin’s iconic life to the big screen. The Obamas are icons and President Obama has spoken about the profound impact of Baldwin’s writing on his life. Darren Walker is a visionary of the highest order. At a moment when the lessons of Baldwin’s life and legacy are more important than ever, I am honored to build on his story with my brilliant partner, Marlon James.”
Anikah McLaren, head of film at Higher Ground, said, “Nicholas Boggs’s revelatory Baldwin: A Love Story is an extraordinary opportunity to bring James Baldwin’s life to the screen with the intimacy and complexity it deserves. By exploring the relationships that shaped Baldwin’s art and activism, this epic book portrays a deeply moving and compelling human story with tremendous cinematic power. Higher Ground is honored to work with Nicholas Boggs, Marlon James, Anonymous Content, and Howard Gertler to bring Baldwin’s story to audiences, and to celebrate a voice whose insight, courage and insistence on love remain profoundly relevant.”
Anonymous Content president and CEO Darren Walker added, “It’s an absolute privilege to partner with Nick and Marlon on Nick’s extraordinary biography about the singular James Baldwin, one of our most consequential writers whose work continues to challenge how we understand ourselves and one another. We have long believed in the power of literature as a foundation for ambitious storytelling and were mesmerized by Nick and Marlon’s vision for the film coupled with the extraordinary opportunity to work with Higher Ground and Howard Gertler to bring it to life.”
James Baldwin Estate representatives Trevor Baldwin and Karim Karefa also weighed in, saying, “In the spirit of collaboration, the James Baldwin Estate entrusts Uncle Jimmy’s life story to the talents of Nicholas Boggs, Marlon James, Darren Walker and the incredible teams at Anonymous Content and Higher Ground.” Trevor Baldwin added, “We are thrilled Anonymous and Higher Ground have partnered to develop the rich life of our beloved Uncle Jimmy from book to screen. We greatly admire Nick and Marlon and support their collaboration for a script that does justice to his journey to be an honest man and a good writer. Our family has always been honored by President Obama’s reverence for Uncle Jimmy’s contribution to the world, so his company’s involvement is a fitting alliance. Given Darren’s long-standing, steadfast dedication to our uncle’s legacy, he is uniquely positioned to shepherd a project of this magnitude with the care and attention to detail it deserves. In alignment with Nick’s beautiful narrative, we look forward to adding supplemental value with our family archives for a historical depiction that both lionizes and humanizes Uncle Jimmy’s existence.”
Boggs and James will write the screenplay and serve as executive producers. Darren Walker and David Levine produce for Anonymous Content, alongside McLaren for Higher Ground and Howard Gertler.
The project reunites Higher Ground and Gertler, who previously collaborated on the Oscar-nominated documentary Crip Camp. Higher Ground’s feature slate also includes Netflix’s upcoming Women Like Us, starring Whoopi Goldberg, Jenifer Lewis, Vanessa Williams and Vivica A. Fox.
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