Actor Manish Dayal will co-produce “Stringer: A Reporter’s Year in the Congo,” the first book written by Anjan Sundaram. Dayal will also play the lead role in the film. The Indian-American actor recently optioned the film along with co-producers Laura Hersh and Dan Spilo of Industry Entertainment, a press release issued by Dayal said.
Dayal is currently in search of a writer to adapt the project, the press release said.
The book follows Sundaram, who at the age of 22, left Yale with his master’s in mathematics and turned down a Goldman Sachs job offer to travel to the Congo to work as a stringer, a freelance journalist, without any previous journalism experience.
The books depicts the dangerous 18 months Sundaram spent in the Congo, earning fifteen cents for every word that he published. It is both a coming of age story as well as an inside look at the atrocities occurring in a country largely ignored by the rest of the world. The memoir was featured on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” and the American Booksellers Association named it one of the best U.S. debuts of 2014.
Dayal was recently seen in “The Hundred-Foot Journey,” opposite Helen Mirren. Directed by Lasse Hallstrom, the film was produced by Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Juliet Blake, and also starred Om Puri.