Issa Rae has teamed up with producer David Heyman to produce the upcoming memoir, The Ghost in the Machine according to a report from Deadline.
Issa Rae will produce through her Issa Rae Productions while Heyman will produce his Heyday Films. Tanya Smith will executive produce the film.
The memoir tells Smith’s unbelievable story— of how a middle-class Black girl from the North Side of Minneapolis would, in the words of the FBI, “become one of the single biggest threats to the entire United States banking system.” The film will follow her extraordinary story of creating a sophisticated wire fraud scheme and outwitting the FBI and prosecutors, who underestimated her intelligence for years, before her life ultimately fell apart, leading to two prison escapes and finally serving 13 years of a 24-year sentence — at the time, the longest sentence handed down to any white-collar criminal.
Smith’s book has not even been published yet and is already been optioned into a film. It’s due for release by its publisher Amazon in 2021. The book will chronicle her rise and fall and share how she finally came to terms with her past and rebuilt her life.
Rae’s HBO series Insecure has earned eight Emmy nominations including Outstanding Comedy Series and Issa Rae herself scoring one for the Lead Actress category.
Issa Rae produced and starred in the film Lovebirds, which is currently streaming on Netflix.