The countdown is on.

The book has sold more than 12 million copies globally, featured on the New York Times best-sellers list for two whole years, and now, we finally have a release date for the movie version of Delia Owens' Where the Crawdads Sing. The movie, which stars Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kya, began its Covid-delayed production, which spanned four months, back in April 2021, and wrapped in July the same year, as revealed by Edgar-Jones herself in an Instagram post. Where the Crawdads Sing will make its much long-awaited premiere in cinemas on July 22 this year. And while there is still no official trailer, Vanity Fair has provided some sneak peek images from the movie – and if these are anything to go by, the movie adaptation looks just as lush and mystifying as the novel itself.

From book to screen

Just a few months after Owens published her now global hit debut novel back in 2018, Reese Witherspoon selected it as part of her popular Hello Sunshine Book Club. And inevitably, the story about Kya, the mysterious “Marsh Girl” living in the Deep South, struck a chord with readers across the world, and ended up selling millions of copies. “I read this novel probably in one day, maybe two days. I just couldn’t put it down,” Witherspoon explains to Vanity Fair about the book she took it upon herself to take to the screen. “I fell in love with Kya as a main character, as a little girl who’s growing up in this very rural area, who’s shunned by society, and is trying to find a way to just save herself, just survive. And the way that Delia Owens wrote this book with such authenticity, you could just tell she really grew up in this place. She really appreciated the nature around her. The book is a love letter to growing up in the South, which for me really resonated because I grew up in New Orleans and Nashville.”

What is Where the Crawdads Sing about?

Warning: Spoilers ahead. Where the Crawdads Sing follows the life of the mysterious “Marsh Girl” — otherwise known as Kya — who lives a solitary life by the swamp of a small town in North Carolina. Abandoned by her family as a child, the fiercely intelligent Kya fends for herself and quietly observes the town’s inhabitants — as she does with her home’s natural flora and fauna too. However, when two teenage boys of different social groups become interested in her and mysterious ways — Kya becomes entangled in the murder of the town’s football star and heart-throb, Chase Andrews. And considered by the local community as “swamp trash,” Kya becomes the prime suspect. Told over 40 years, the movie (like novel) follows the trials and tribulations of Kya, and for those yet to read the prize-winning novel, well, you really should aim to do so ahead of the movie's epic release later this year.