Rebecca Hall's Star-Studded Directorial Debut 'Passing' Goes to Netflix in Big Sundance Deal

The Duke of Hastings himself will be live from New York next Saturday night.

It’s about time we start recognizing how great Ruth Negga is. The star of “Loving” and the recent Sundance film “Passing” has been doing consistently good work since she starred in the cult TV series “Misfits,” but she hasn’t really had a star vehicle until now.

EXCLUSIVE: The remarkable story of Josephine Baker, one of the most influential female entertainers of the 20th century, will be the subject of Josephine, a limited drama series in development at ABC Signature, with Ruth Negga attached to star as the legendary Jazz age performer and civil rights activist.

One of the Sundance Film Festival titles this year expected to spark a bidding war was Passing, the directorial debut from Rebecca Hall. The movie, an ambitious period piece, had plenty of buzz going into the festival, and that continued with largely positive reviews.

As she explained to us in an interview of the Deep Focus podcast, Rebecca Hall has been working a long time bringing her directorial debut, “Passing,” to life. Even though the debut was delayed due to the pandemic, the period drama finally premiered as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Netflix has acquired the worldwide rights to splashy Sundance title Passing, the directorial debut ofRebecca Hall that stars Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga. Sources peg the deal as being north of $15 million.

Irene (Tessa Thompson) rarely passes for white. She fears for her safety too much to do so.

Angelique Jackson Rebecca Hall’s directorial debut already made a big splash with its Sundance Film Festival premiere — and its set to make even bigger noise as Netflix is nearing a $16 million deal for worldwide distribution rights on the film, an individual with knowledge of the deal tells Variety.Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga star in the project — written and directed by Hall and based on the 1929 novella by Nella Larsen –about racial passing in 1920s New York.More to come…

Also Read: Female Directors Rule Sundance 2021 - Is Equality Finally Here?TheWrap’s Carlos Aguilar called the film in his review “impressively refined and superbly acted” and compared Hall to another actor turned director, Regina King, writing that “Hall arrives behind the camera fully formed as a storyteller handling thought-provoking subject matter with formidable aesthetic sensibilities.”More to come… 

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix is nearing a deal to acquire worldwide rights to Passing, the Rebecca Hall-directed and scripted drama that stars Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga, Andre Holland, and Alexander Skarsgard. Sources said the deal will land just north of $15 million.

“Chadwick Bosman was an amazing artist. We’ve all been thrilled, and excited, and overwhelmed by the depth of his work,” said Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom director George C. Wolfe who presented the late actor Chadwick Bosman with Performance of the Year Award at Critics’ Choice Association’s virtual annual celebration Of Black cinema. “He was so present, not just as an actor but he was present as a human being.”

is, in a way, and it scared me, truly — the idea of playing her really terrified me. So I thought, that’s probably a good thing to do then.”“Passing” follows two women — Irene and Claire, played by Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga.

Rebecca Hall came across Nella Larsen’s novel “Passing” at a time when she was grappling with her own family history.She’d become aware that her maternal grandfather was “white passing,” and it might have gone back even further. Then someone handed her this book, from 1929, about two light-skinned Black women, Clare and Irene, who live on opposite sides of the color line.

Exquisite performances from Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga provide the pulsing, emotionally heightened center to Passing, Rebecca Hall's assured move behind the camera, adapted with great sensitivity from the 1929 novel by Harlem Renaissance author Nella Larsen. "We're all of us passing for something or other, aren't we?" muses Thompson's melancholy character Irene Redfield.

Sundance Film Festival Cinema Café talk on Sunday with Rebecca Hall. “Everybody was a judge and there was so much bullying going on.

Jessica Kiang It starts in sweltering heat; it ends in freezing weather. And in between, as the temperature gradually drops, Rebecca Hall’s “Passing,” based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, calmly brings the diffuse racial landscape of prohibition-era New York City into crystalline, gorgeously shot focus.

Irene (Tessa Thompson) rarely passes for white. She fears for her safety too much to do so.

The presumed dead-and-buried practice of racial passing by light-skinned blacks in the United States decades ago is returned to center-stage in Passing, a delicate, sensitive, intentionally claustrophobic and not entirely limber directorial debut from the protean British stage performer Rebecca Hall.

See Photos: 14 Buzziest Sundance Movies for Sale in 2021, From Questlove's 'Summer of Soul' to Rebecca Hall's 'Passing'As conflicted Irene, Thompson delivers her finest work to date, reminiscent of her turn in the recent period piece “Sylvie’s Love” but with greater substance.