Clearly aware that his Breaking Bad comments were creating an untenable amount of negative press, Oliver Stone has, wisely, decided to get some heat off his back by launching a new project before the week closed out. (Let’s at least pretend that’s the main reason.) According to TheWrap, the helmer is looking to reunite with his Any Given Sunday star, Jamie Foxx, for a WB- and DreamWorks-backed biopic centered on the life and times of Martin Luther King Jr., for which Kario Salem (Chasing Mavericks) has penned the screenplay.
Details don’t reach much further, save for one curious factor: the script which Stone may direct has come with an approval by King’s family, who have developed a somewhat notorious reputation for dictating what depictions can and cannot make their way to the screen — and, you can imagine, they’d prefer a rather clean portrayal all-around. With as much in mind, yours truly can’t help but wonder — prematurely, it should be admitted — if the filmmaker at play will be more of the World Trade Center variety than, say, the incisive and electrified man behind Nixon or JFK. Formal distinctions between the latter two and its more recent, aforementioned-for-the-sake-of-comparison counterpart more or less speak for themselves, and the difference in quality is, I think, evident enough. Is it too soon to hold some concern, then? We always hope for the best when it comes to Stone, and Foxx seems a suitable pick for the role — in no small part because there’s a beautiful bit of synchronicity in his involvement with a King biopic and having had the central role in Django Unchained.
For now, Warner Bros. and DreamWorks will be in some strange competition with Selma, the Ava DuVernay–directed, David Oyelowo-starring project that takes similar focus. (Word of Paul Greengrass‘ Memphis, which might have had a kickstart in May, is relatively absent in the story at hand.) If Stone, Foxx, and other company move forward with their King picture, we might be right to expect further updates by the end of this year.
What do you think of this duo taking on the life of an American icon?