EXCLUSIVE: Amazon Studios is negotiating to finance and distribute the next film by Jennifer Kent, the Australian filmmaker who followed the sleeper horror hit The Babadook with the shocking period revenge tale The Nightingale, which was part of last year’s Toronto Film Festival. Kent will write and direct an adaptation of Alice + Freda Forever, based on the book by Alexis Coe.

Greg Berlanti, Sidney Kimmel, Sarah Schechter and John Penotti are producing. A summer 2020 production start is planned.

The studio is in advanced negotiations to finance and gain worldwide distribution rights. Kent changes locales from The Nightingale‘s 1825 Tasmania to 1890s Memphis, Tennessee.

Two teenage girls, Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward, fell deeply in love, until jealousy and outside forces turn their romance into an unstable obsession. The result was a crime story that captivated the U.S. for a time.

Kent is repped by WME, Exile Entertainment and Sloane Offer Weber Dern. Deal was brokered by Endeavor Content.