The influential production company A24 has won the rights to adapt Patrick Radden Keefe’s The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream for a television series, Deadline reports.
Keefe’s book, published in 2009 by Doubleday, tells the true story of Cheng Chui Ping, who led a smuggling operation that brought undocumented immigrants from China to the U.S. in the late 20th century. She was convicted in 2005 on three counts, and given a 35-year prison sentence; she died in a federal prison in 2014.
A critic for Kirkus called the book “a well-told, panoramic international true-crime adventure.” Keefe will serve as the series’ creator and executive producer.
A24, known for producing films including Moonlight and Hereditary, is currently working on other adaptations of literary works, including series based on Bryan Washington’s Memorial, Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, and Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning.
The Snakehead is the second of Keefe’s books headed to the small screen. A series based on his 2019 book, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, which was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, is in the works at the network FX.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
