Malcolm Washington puts a horror-movie spin on August Wilson with Netflix's "The Piano Lesson," a family drama that doubles as ghost story.

The stars of “The Piano Lesson” had quite the spiritual experience by the time the Netflix movie came to its dramatic end. Based on August Wilson’s 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “The Piano Lesson” centers on a family’s fight over a prized ...

Malcolm Washington’s feature-length directorial debut, ‘The Piano Lesson,’ is a historical drama film that scrutinizes the role of legacy and the past in building one’s current reality. The story takes place in Pittsburg in 1936 and centers around a family heirloom piano that rests in Doaker Charles’ household.

But with “The Piano Lesson,” Wilson’s work has become a family affair. In 2015, Washington announced that he had made an arrangement with Wilson’s estate to adapt all ten of the plays included in Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle – also known as the Century Cycle.