Picturestart to Develop Film Adaptation of Elizabeth Acevedo’s Novel “With the Fire on High”

Elizabeth Acevedo’s Fire is headed to the big screen…

Picturestart has acquired the rights to the Dominican-American poet and author’s New York Times bestselling novel With the Fire on High and will develop and produce a film that Acevedo is set to adapt.

Elizabeth Acevedo

Published in May by HarperCollins, the book tells the story of Emoni Santiago, a 17-year-old girl who must navigate the challenges of modern life in Philadelphia after becoming a single mother during her freshman year of high school. The one place she can let all that go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness and pure joy for everyone in her life including her baby girl and her abuela. Even though she dreams of working as a chef after she graduates, Emoni knows it’s not worth her time to pursue the impossible. Yet, despite the rules she thinks she has to play by, once Emoni starts cooking, her only choice is to let her talent break free.

This year, Acevedo, a slam poet, became the first woman of color to win the Carnegie Medalchildren’s book award for her novel Poet X, which also won the 2018 National Book Award for Young People’s Literatureamong other prizes.