Moonlight star Ashton Sanders is in final negotiations to take on the lead role of Bigger Thomas in a film version of Richard Wrights novel Native Son.

Nick Robinson, the lead actor in gay teen romance-drama Love, Simon, is also in talks to join the cast along with Margaret Qualley, Kiki Layne, and Bill Camp.

Entertainment company A24, which released Moonlight, announced on Thursday that it has acquired worldwide rights to Native Son with a new adaptation written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks.

Conceptual artiste Rashid Johnson will make his feature directing debut with this film. The film will be set in present-day Chicago, Johnson's hometown.

In the 1940 novel, Bigger Thomas is a 20-year-old African American living in poverty on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s.