Book “Torto Arado”, by Itamar Vieira Junior, may win a series on HBO Max

The book “Plowed Pie”by the Bahian writer and geographer Itamar Vieira Junior, can be adapted into a series on a streaming platform.

THE HBO Max announced on Monday (25) that it has authorized the development of a script for the series based on the 2020 Jabuti Prize-winning work.

If the script is approved, HBO Max will authorize the production of the episodes, which will be directed by the filmmaker. Heitor Dhalia.

“The ‘Torto Arado’, in addition to the story it narrates, suggests a very rich universe of images and sensations from the bowels of the country. Adapting the work has been a great pleasure and a challenge. They are strong characters in a Brazil that is rarely portrayed in the audiovisual sector”, said Dhalia, who conceived the project.

The screenplay is being written by screenwriters Luh Maza, Renata Di Carmo, Maria Shu, Viviane Ferreira and assistant screenwriter Ceci Alves.

The production company that will be in charge of the series, if given the green light, will be Paranoid, which owns the rights to the best seller.

“I am transposing this literature and its imagery into action and image and reconstructing the time of history alongside other black authors that I admire so much, which brings to the writing of the series a look crossed by experiences and ancestry common to the main characters and narrators” , reported Luh Maza, head writer.

“We want the viewer to know – and recognize – the Água Negra farm and its inhabitants, the evils and forces that are endemic to this representation of deep Brazil,” he added.

CNN interview

In February 2021, the CNN Our World interviewed the writer Itamar Vieira Júnior, the best-selling and most awarded living Brazilian author in Brazil at the moment.

The theme of the interview with Vieira Júnior was “courage and determination to make dreams come true”.

A geographer by training, a servant of Incra, he faced resistance in his dream of being a writer. Born on the outskirts of Salvador, he heard from his family that writing was a waste of time. In the literary market, he faced the barriers of bureaucracy.

The story changed after the age of 40, when he won a literary contest with “Torto Arado”. Since then, eight editions, 60,000 books have been sold and the Jabuti Award for the best novel of 2020, the highest honor in the Brazilian literary world.

For the writer, “big publishing houses are opening up to diversity”. In the interview with CNN Nosso Mundo, the writer talks about how issues of territoriality, memory and orality influenced the language and theme of the book.