Amandla Stenberg to Star in Black Lives Matter Movie

Hunger Games actress Amanda Stenberg is set to star in "The Hate U Give," an upcoming film adapted from a YA-novel inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and the murder of Oscar Grant.

Stenberg, who came out as bisexual earlier this year, will star as a 16-year-old girl who witnesses the murder of her unarmed best friend. The film will be directed by George Tillman Jr. (Notorious and Barbershop)from a script by Audrey Wells (Under the Tuscan Sun).

Although it has yet to be released, Fox 2000 has already secured the rights to the upcoming YA-novel by debut author Angela Thomas. The book itself was involved in a fierce bidding war by over 13 publishing houses. The plot summary reads:

The Hate U Give tells the story of 16-year-old Starr, who navigates between the poverty-stricken slum she has grown up in and the upper-crust suburban prep school she attends. Her life is up-ended when she is an eyewitness to a police officer shooting her best friend, Khalil, who turns out to have been unarmed during the confrontation--but may or may not have been a drug dealer. As Starr finds herself even more torn between the two vastly different worlds she inhabits, she also has to contend with speaking her truth and, in the process, trying to stay alive herself.

"I was struck from the very first pages," co-publisher Donna Bray of Balzer + Bray told Publishers Weekly. "What an accomplished debut. [Thomas] painted a picture of this girl, this family, and this community in such an authentic way that I rarely see in YA literature."