Martin Luther King was in Memphis to support poor sanitation workers the day before he was shot on Apr. 4, 1968. Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy) wrote the script called Memphis, which takes place during the final days of Dr. King’s life, but the biopic has been put on indefinite hold, due to financial issues.
However, the Memphis project is coming back around. Veritas is reportedly in negotiations to finance with Wild Bunch. Greengrass and producer Scott Rudin moved on to make the Sony drama Captain Phillips, and now it appears that the MLK’s biopic is coming back around with Greengrass and Rudin hoping to make it their next project.
As I mentioned above, the story takes place during the final days of Dr. King’s life in the titular Tennessee city, juxtaposed with the manhunt for King’s assassin, James Earl Ray, ‘involving some of the federal authorities who, at Hoover’s direction, had dogged King’s every step with wiretaps and whispering campaigns before the civil rights leader’s death.’
The Memphis script apparently doesn’t skip some of King’s more imperfect qualities such as infidelity, but as for now the story is ‘a powerful testament to King’s struggle and sacrifice’ that depicts him as a human being.
Keep your fingers crossed and hope everything works out.
The aforementioned Greengrass drama about the Somali pirate heist that stars Tom Hanks, hits theaters on October 11th, 2013.
Source: Deadline
