Mica Levi Scoring Zola, A Movie Adaptation Of That Viral Twitter Thread
For a couple of days in 2015, “the Zola story” took over Twitter. A woman named Aziah Wells had told a story about going to Tampa to work as a stripper. In the story, she made the trip with another woman and her boyfriend, who turned out to be a violent pimp. The thread took a bunch of different, unpredictable turns. There was a kidnapping, a shooting, a suicide attempt. The real story turned out to be partially fiction, which a lot of people suspected anyway. But people still ate this thing up. (Zola Jesus, the other famous person who calls herself Zola, felt compelled to comment.) And the Twitter thread was still adapted into a motion picture. The movie is set to come out next year, and it’ll have a score from one of the most exciting people currently working in that medium.
According to Film Music Reporter, Mica Levi, the artist formerly known as Micachu, will score the movie, which is called Zola. After making her name by making oblique, skittery pop music, Levi entered the film-score world with her instantly-iconic work on 2014’s Under The Skin. Levi has also scored 2016’s Jackie (which earned her an Oscar nomination) and this year’s Monos. Zola will only be her fourth film score, and it should give her plenty of chances to make queasy, ominous sounds.
As Variety reports, James Franco initially bought the adaptation rights, though he took his name off of the project. Janicza Bravo is directing; she wrote and directed the 2017 film Lemon, and she’s worked on the TV series Atlanta. Bravo co-wrote the screenplay with the playwright Jeremy O. Harris. Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Colman Domingo, and Nicholas Braun (Cousin Greg!) are set to star. The film will premiere 1/24 at Sundance.