EXCLUSIVE: Zoe Saldana has teamed with producers Jane Startz and Aida Bernal to option the mystery thriller Hell Or High Water. The Avatar actress and her sister Cisley’s Saldana Productions will work with Jane Startz Productions and Bernal’s Spellbound Entertainment to bring the novel to the screen. The companies are determining whether Joy Castro‘s debut novel will be a feature or better positioned as a TV series. Hell Or High Water follows New Orleans reporter Nola Céspedes as she is dragged into the city’s post-Katrina underworld on the trail of what she thinks will be her big scoop. The novel was released July 17 by Thomas Dunne Books and was called one of the best books of 2012 by The Kirkus Review.

Saldana stars in the upcoming J.J. Abrams-directed Star Trek Into Darkness, which is out May 17, 2013. She will next be seen alongside Clive Owen in Blood Ties, directed by Guillaume Canet. Startz is repped by attorney Maggie Pisacane. Bernal is repped by attorney Joe Weiner. Zoe Saldana is repped by ICM and Morris Yorn Barnes Levine Krintzman Rubenstein & Kohner.

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