Dee Ress has been tapped to direct a Hulu series adaptation of the novel “Saint X” by Alexis Schaitkin.
Rees is best known for directing (“Mudbound,” “Pariah.”) The eight-episode drama is being adapted by Leila Gerstein (“Hart of Dixie,” “The Handmaid’s Tale.”)
The news was first reported by Deadline and Variety.
The series is described as a psychological drama told from multiple perspectives and across various timelines.
“Saint X” aims to explore and upend the missing-girl story and explores how a young woman’s mysterious death during a picturesque Caribbean vacation “creates a traumatic ripple effect that eventually pulls her surviving sister into a dangerous pursuit of the truth.”
According to Variety, Schaitkin’s novel also received acclaim for the way it examined white privilege and media obsession with missing young women.
In an interview with the New York Times, Rees expressed a long-time directorial goal of hers in the filmmaking space.
“I want to have a world with a Black woman at the center of it, who ends up leading a rebellion,” she said. “I want to create a whole new world rather than color in somebody else’s.”
In a separate interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Rees also weighed in on the lack of diversity in the film industry
“There’s a blind spot in terms of the gatekeepers, of how we think about what’s important, what’s technique,” she told the publication. “Sometimes Black filmmakers, when we make something that’s great … there’s a feeling that you stumbled into it. Or they’re looking over our shoulder like, ‘Who is the person really responsible for this thing?’ “
