David Farnor | On 11, Feb 2021

Hala director Minhal Baig has inked an overall deal with Amazon Studios.

Baig, who made her feature debut with 1 Night in 2016, caught the world’s eye with her second feature, Hala, which premiered at Sundance in 2019. Expanded from her 2016 short of the same name, the film was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the festival and was promptly picked up by Apple TV+,

“A quietly personal coming-of-age story that realises the cultural stereotypes and expectations come from audiences as well as characters, and deftly shrugs them off to tell its own story instead,” we wrote in our review.

Now, she’s heading from Apple to Amazon, reports Deadline, and already has her first project lined up: Baig will adapt Samantha Schweblin’s short story collection Mouthful of Birds, which was published last year. The compendium of stories features women on the edge, men turned upside down and the natural world at odds with reality.

Baig will write and exec-produce the horror drama, following a protagonist who attempts to come to terms with a traumatic event from her childhood that she cannot remember. David Kaplan and Evan Nicholas (Animal Kingdom, Beach Rats) will also exec-produce the series.

She joins a growing number of stars with deals in place at Amazon Studios, including Riz Ahmed, Lizzo, Viola Davis, Robert Kirkman and Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna.

Baig is pictured above on the set of Hala, which is available to stream on Apple TV+.

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