Common Footage is in closing talks with Chris Rock to direct King: A Life, a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr biopic.
Common Footage and Chris Rock are teaming up for King: A Life, a cinematic biopic centering on the life and occasions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Common optioned the rights to adapt Jonathan Eig’s page-turning biography King: A Life. Rock is in closing talks to direct, with Steven Spielberg government producing.
Here’s a synopsis for Eig’s novel by way of Amazon:
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the primary main biography in many years of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.―and the primary to incorporate lately declassified FBI recordsdata. On this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer offers us an intimate view of the brave and sometimes emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceable protest for his motion however was not often at peace with himself. He casts recent mild on the King household’s origins in addition to MLK’s complicated relationships along with his spouse, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling along with his personal human frailties and darkish moods, a citizen hunted by his personal authorities, and a person decided to battle for justice even when it proved to be a battle to the demise.
As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a person who recast American race relations and have become our solely modern-day founding father―in addition to the nation’s most mourned martyr.
On this landmark biography, Eig offers us an MLK for our occasions: a deep thinker, an excellent strategist, and a dedicated radical who led one in every of historical past’s best actions, and whose calls for for racial and financial justice stay as pressing at present as they had been in his lifetime.
Amblin Companions produces with Kristie Macosko Krieger and Rock. King: A Life offers Rock a implausible alternative to share extra of his directing chops with the world and emerge from the shadow of the notorious “Oscar slap” incident with Will Smith.
Eig’s novel is taken into account by many to be an important illustration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s many achievements and energy of spirit and perseverance. With such sturdy supply materials to drag from, Rock’s biopic could possibly be probably the most highly effective representations of the King’s lasting contributions to world historical past.