Two major Hollywood talents are set to team up today as Deadline reports that Jennifer Lawrence is set to headline a planned adaptation of war photographer Lynsey Addario’s memoir “It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War” that has Steven Spielberg attached to direct. Warner Bros. Pictures secured the big screen rights to the original book, released just last month with the following official description:
Lynsey Addario was just finding her way as a photographer when September 11th changed the world. One of the few photojournalists with experience in Afghanistan, she gets the call to return and cover the American invasion. She makes a decision she would often find herself making—not to stay home, not to lead a quiet or predictable life, but to risk her life, to set out across the world, and to make a name for herself. It’s What I Do follows a course unavoidable for Addario—from her first camera and the pictures it inspired, to early years as a street photographer and the inspiration she found in the work of Sebastião Salgado. Photography becomes a way for her to travel with a purpose—a singular ambition that shapes and drives her.
As a woman photojournalist determined to be taken as seriously as her male peers, Addario fights her way into a boy’s club of a profession, eventually earning widespread recognition, a MacArthur Genius Grant, and a Pulitzer Prize. Refusing to turn down career-defining assignments, she puts romance and family on hold. Yet the sadness and injustice she encounters as as a conflict reporter give her a new vision for her own life, and the more she sees of the world, the greater her desires for love and family grow. It’s What I Do is also the story of how Addario met her husband and father to their child, and how as a war correspondent and a mother, she learned to live her life in two different—though hardly separate—worlds.
Watching uprisings unfold and people fight to the death for their freedom, Addario understands she is documenting not only news but also the fate of society. It’s What I Do is more than just a snapshot of life on the front lines; it is witness to the human cost of war.
Andrew Lazar is attached to produce the big screen version.
You can check out Addario herself discussing her book and her career in the player below:
(Photo Credit: C.Smith / WENN.com)
