NATALIE PORTMAN is set to star in and executive produce an adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel “The Days of Abandonment” for HBO Films.

Maggie Betts is directing, writing and executive producing the film based on Ferrante’s acclaimed novel, first published in Italian in 2002 and republished in English in 2005. Portman will play Tess, a woman who abandoned her own dreams for a stable home life and is in turn abandoned by her husband, throwing her world off its axis.

Ferrante’s “The Days of Abandonment” is described as a a visceral, no-holds-barred journey into the mind of a woman in crisis that confronts the norms of motherhood and female identity as Portman’s character traverses the darkest reaches of her own psyche.

Betts is the writer and director of the 2017 film “Novitiate.”

Another Ferrante book, “The Lost Daughter,” is also being turned into a feature directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and starring Dakota Johnson, Olivia Colman and Peter Sarsgaard.

（SD-Agencies）