Nowadays, Reese Witherspoon’s book club is something of a publishing machine. A selection is pretty much a best-seller guarantee. And one of her greatest successes lies with Where the Crawdads Sing, Reese’s Book Club’s September 2018 pick. The Celia Owens novel follows a Kya, an isolated young woman from the North Carolina marshlands, who stands accused of murdering a member of a wealthy local family. A tale of love, deception, abandonment, and even ethology unfolds as throughout the murder trial. This is all to say that it’s an engrossing read. And ripe for a film adaptation, produced by Witherspoon herself no less. The Where the Crawdads Sing trailer, naturally, does not disappoint.
The Where the Crawdads Sing trailer does a pretty stellar job setting up the story without giving too much away. The novel largely spans 20 years, through Kya’s abandonment as an adolescent through to her adult years as a recluse and town outcast. And of course, the associations that make her a prime murder suspect. It looks like we’ll see much of that play out on-screen. To the sound of folklore era Taylor Swift no less. The Grammy winning singer is coming for that Oscar with her new song “Carolina,” which debuted in the Where the Crawdads Sing trailer.
Here’s the full synopsis from Sony:
From the best-selling novel comes a captivating mystery. Where the Crawdads Sing tells the story of Kya, an abandoned girl who raised herself to adulthood in the dangerous marshlands of North Carolina. For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” haunted Barkley Cove, isolating the sharp and resilient Kya from her community. Drawn to two young men from town, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world; but when one of them is found dead, she is immediately cast by the community as the main suspect. As the case unfolds, the verdict as to what actually happened becomes increasingly unclear, threatening to reveal the many secrets that lay within the marsh.
The film stars Normal People‘s Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kya Clark, alongside Taylor John Smith and Harris Dickinson. The former plays Tate Walker, a friend of Kya’s brother who helps her navigate the world, while the latter is Chase Andrews, a popular quarterback and local celebrity. Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer, Jr., and David Strathairn round out the cast. Olivia Newman directs the film, with a script from Lucy Alibar.
I, for one, am very curious to see how this film plays out. Edgar-Jones, who just starred in the cannibalistic comedy thriller Fresh, proved she can pull off the always difficult Irish accent in Normal People. So we’ll see how she fares with regional North Carolina. And I’d be remiss to not point out that Taylor John Smith and Harris Dickinson look remarkably similar. To the point where I definitely got them confused for one another the first time watching the trailer. But I guess that’s the point in the grand scheme of things.
Luckily, we won’t have to wait too long to see the film. Where the Crawdads Sing debuts in July.