Oprah Winfrey Will Star, Produce HBO’s ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’

Oprah Winfrey is sinking deeper into her acting roots as evident in her recent projects for OWN and now for HBO.

Winfrey is attached to star in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – a film that has taken almost five years to come to fruition.

According to Variety – Winfrey’s Harpo Films secured the rights to the book by Rebecca Skloot back in 2010 but it took this long to get things underway.

HBO finally gave its blessing and with that comes the army of executive producers that include Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball as well as actor and director Peter Macdissi.

George C. Wolfe who wrote the screenplay will also direct the film that tells the real life story of Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman whose cancerous cells were harvested without prior consent in an effort to spearhead the first of many human cell congregations.

Winfrey will play the daughter of the woman, Deborah Lacks as she embarks on a quest to investigate the mother she never met who underwent the controversial procedure back in 1951. She also uncovers how her mother’s extracted cells ultimately provided ground-breaking results that forever altered the scope of medicine at large.

The sons of Henrietta Lacks (Zakariyya Rahman and David Lacks, Jr.) as well as her granddaughter Jeri Lacksare, will perform consulting duties.

Shooting for the project starts as early as this summer – but there’s no word yet on a release date.