According to Deadline, Ace Entertainment has given the go-ahead to adapt Laura Taylor Namey’s New York Times best-seller A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow I. Maia Reficco, Kit Connor, and Kate del Castillo are set to star in the film as its primary characters. Lila Reyes, the protagonist of Namey’s charming young adult novel, is a Miami native with her life mapped out, starting with a job at her Cuban grandmother’s bakery. Yet, with her grandmother’s death, everything shifts. Her parents want her to spend the summer helping out in the kitchen at her Aunt’s inn in Winchester, London so she can get over her loss.
She falls in love with Orion, a lovely British store clerk, in this little English village. But back home, she has a lover she intends to marry. After meeting Orion, though, Lila begins to see an alternative future, one that necessitates abandoning her current plans. The cast is locked down, but no one knows what their specific parts are yet. With the actors present, it is reasonable to presume that Reficco is portraying Lila, Connor is the charming Orion, and Castillo might be Lila’s Aunt in the production now underway in Yorkshire, England.
Documentary filmmaker Katherine Fairfax will be making her directorial debut with this feature-length story (Call Me Kuchu). She’ll be directing from a script co-written by Miss Conception’s Savion Einstein and the forthcoming K-Pops! writer Khaila Amazan. Reficco, who previously starred on Nickelodeon’s Kally’s Mashup, is the main cast member on HBO Max’s Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin. After that, you can catch her in the upcoming Netflix comedy Do Revenge, co-starring Maya Hawke and Camila Mendes and directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson.
Currently starring in the British adolescent drama Heartstopper on Netflix, Connor’s acting resume also includes roles in films like Rocketman and Ready Player One, as well as the upcoming Mr Holmes. Del Castillo is an alumna of La Reina del Sur who has starred in several films, including Bad Boys for Life, All About Nina, and The Book of Life. ACE Entertainment, the studio behind the All The Boys I’ve Loved films that launched the careers of Noah Centineo and Lana Condor and Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between, has tapped Matt Kaplan to produce.
Kaplan, Matt Janzen, and Aubrey Bendix will produce, with TeaShop Films’ Mark Lane serving as executive producer. A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow has not yet been scheduled for publication.