Janelle Monae is set to star in and produce an adaptation of Tanya Smith’s heist memoir.
Janelle Monae will star in the film adaptation
The 39-year-old actress will play the con artist – who was convicted of bank and wire fraud in the 80s – in the upcoming adaptation of her heist memoir, ‘Never Saw Me Coming: How I Outsmarted the FBI and the Entire Banking System – and Pocketed $40 Million’.
Janelle will actually produce the project through her company Wondaland Pictures, while Tanya will serve as an executive producer on the film.
Tanya started defrauding banks as a teenager and she was eventually making millions through hacking financial systems.
Tanya actually managed to evade the police for years, before she was ultimately corned by the FBI. However, the authorities refused to believe that a black woman could pull off such sophisticated crimes.
According to a synopsis of the new film, the FBI thought that “these are not the kind of crimes black people are smart enough to commit”.
Tanya is now a free woman, after successfully organising her own legal defence, and the ex-con has even emerged as an advocate for prison reform and racial justice.
Tanya detailed her remarkable journey in ‘Never Saw Me Coming: How I Outsmarted the FBI and the Entire Banking System – and Pocketed $40 Million’, the 2024 heist memoir.
Rights to the book have now been acquired by Universal Pictures, which is set to adapt the memoir into a movie.
Ryan Jones, Universal’s senior VP of production development, and Tony Ducret, the director of development, are set to oversee the project on behalf of the studio.
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