Tanya Smith’s remarkable story of how a middle-class black girl from the North Side of Minneapolis outwitted the FBI has been captured in her upcoming memoir, The Ghost in the Machine. Netflix has won the rights to the feature film on the upcoming memoir and Issa Rae and David Heyman are set to produce the adaptation, while Smith serves as the executive producer.
Smith’s story is worth retelling because according to the FBI, she became “one of the single biggest threats to the entire United States banking system.”
The film will retell the incredible story of how Smith created a complex wire fraud scheme and outsmarted the FBI and prosecutors for years all because her intelligence was underrated.
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It was when her life fell apart that she was caught, then escaped prison twice before finally completing 13 years of a 24-year sentence. At the time, it was the longest sentence given to a convicted white-collar criminal.
The memoir on the other hand pre-empted by Little A/Amazon will be published in 2021. It will narrate everything we need to know about Smith and how she eventually took responsibility for her actions in the past and finally rebuilding her life.
According to Deadline, the Netflix adaptation will be overseen by Montrel McKay and Sara Rastogi for Issa Rae Productions. Rae is everyone’s homegirl on her hit HBO series Insecure, nonetheless, she has also been busy both on and off-screen producing and starring in other projects.
The musical documentary Dark City Beneath The Beat which follows the Baltimore club music scene was produced by Rae. She starred in Netflix romcom The Lovebirds as well as Universal’s romantic drama The Photograph. The boss lady was also the executive producer for both films.
Heyman’s Heyday Films side of the deal will be overseen by Jillian Share and Jeffrey Clifford on behalf of the company. He has two best picture Oscar nominations this year under his belt for producing Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time In Hollywood which grossed $374 million at the worldwide box office and won Brad Pitt his first Oscar for acting. The other, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, brought home the first Academy Award for Laura Dern her.
It is safe to say that feature film for The Ghost in the Machine is in safe hands as both Rae and Heyman are expected to produce a top-notch film that will do justice to the life of Smith.
