For the past couple of months we’ve been reporting on Precious director Lee Daniel’s plans for a film called Selma, based on the civil rights marches that took place in the Alabama town in the mid-1960s and which helped spark outrage across the US. The marches led to the Voting Rights Act that specifically gave black people the right to vote for the first time.
Hugh Jackman has already signed up to play a racist cop, while Robert De Niro is tentatively onboard as Alabama Governor George Wallace, who flew in the face of growing public anger because of his desire to put down the African-American population. There’s also Lenny Kravitz, who’ll be playing civil right activist Andrew Young. However one role we haven’t heard about until now is perhaps the most pivotal one – Martin Luther King.
Although King wasn’t involved in the first march – which planned to go from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery, but was forcibly stopped after only a few blocks – he led the ensuing protests, which involved two more marches, one symbolic one to the place where the first march was violently stopped, before finally reaching the capital after the governor was forced to rescind his order stopping the protests.
Now THR is reporting that British actor David Oyelowo is the one who’ll be stepping into King’s shoes. Best known in the UK for Spooks, Oyelowo has also appeared in The Last King Od Scotland, Small Island and will soon be seen in George Lucas’ Red Tails.
THR also reports that while preparations are continuing, Selma may be under threat for financial reasons. Pathe was on board to finance the movie, but it seems they want to scale back their involvement, and so the producers are now shopping the script around in the hope of raising funds. Let’s hope they get the money, as it’s a tale that’s well worth telling on film.