Hillary Clinton’s new production company HiddenLight Productions obtained the movie rights to the book “The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice” this month.
The former Secretary of State, along with Sam Branson and Chelsea Clinton, fought an intense bidding war for the rights to best-selling author Gayle Tzemach Lemmon’s book, Deadline reported.
Based on years of on-the-ground reporting and drawing from hundreds of hours of interviews, “The Daughters of Kobani” is the story of an all-women Kurdish militia who fought back against ISIS in Syria and won.
“The Daughters of Kobani is an extraordinary account of brave, defiant women fighting for justice and equality,” Clinton said. “We created HiddenLight to celebrate heroes — sung and unsung alike — whose courage is too often overlooked, and we could not be more thrilled to bring this inspiring story to viewers around the world.”
“In helping to cement the territorial defeat of ISIS, whose savagery toward women astounded the world, these women played a central role in neutralizing the threat the group posed worldwide,” the Penguin Random House website states.
The female warriors emerged with the goal of not only defeating ISIS, but establishing gender equality in the Middle East and beyond, earning the respect of United States Special Operations Forces. The book is set to be published by Penguin Press on February 16.
“No one has fought harder than Sec. Clinton to lift the voices of women around the world and to shine light on the lives of women fighting each day for their futures,” Lemmon said. “She is a true trailblazer, and there is no better partner to bring The Daughters of Kobani and this story of the women who broke ISIS to the screen than HiddenLight.”
Created in December 2020, HiddenLight Productions is a studio aimed at creaing documentary, unscripted and scripted entertainment, led by Executive Chair Roma Khanna, and CEO Johnny Webb.
The new production company’s first undertaking is “Gutsy Women,” inspired by the best-selling book, “The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience. Hillary and Chelsea are hosting the project that seeks to answer the question: “What exactly does it take to be a Gutsy Woman?”
Lemmon’s New York Times bestseller “Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield,” was won in a similar bidding war by Reese Witherspoon, who is producing the story for Universal with Lesli Linka Glatter as director.
