The fact that he’s been convicted on tax evasion and faces a three-year stint in jail doesn’t seem to have stopped Wesley Snipes wanting to make movies. Indeed, according to Deadline, he’s plan a flick about J. Edgar Hoover and his efforts to discredit Martin Luther King Jr.
Seemingly undeterred by his legal problems (he merely says to Deadline about that, Its all good, put it like that”), or the fact Clint Eastwood is making a Hoover biopic too, Snipes says he’s got the King family’s endorsement for a movie looking at how during the Civil Rights era, the FBI saw MLK as a major threat, and tried to subvert his influence.
The movie, currently titled Code Name Zorro, would be framed by the final moments in the life of William Sullivan, who headed the covert program, and was planning to be involved a book about his actions (which would denounce what he and Hoover had done) and testify about the killings of King and John F. Kennedy before the House Select Committee on assassinations. However shortly before that could take place, Sullivan was shot and killed in what was officially described as a ‘hunting accident’, but which many believe could have been an assassination.
Sullivan had wiretapped King’s phone, tried to break up his marriage by giving his wife tapes of MLK’s meeting with other women, and even planted people in the Civil Right movements whose job was to report back to the FBI on everything that was going on. Indeed, while Hoover was more than happy with the operation, it was Sullivan who pushed for it, writing in a letter shortly after the I Have A Dream speech, “We must mark [King] now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation,” adding that it, “may be unrealistic to limit ourselves as we have been doing to legalistic proofs or definitely conclusive evidence that would stand up in testimony in court or before Congressional Committees.”
It’s certainly an interesting story, and joins a current throng of film and TV projects involving either Hoover or King. Interestingly, it’s apparently “not so much the persecution angle” that interested Snipes about the tale, I was attracted to the whistleblower dynamic. It’s a challenging situation for a man to be in, to be among the shadowy and most powerful men in the world, who exposed information to mislead the public. What an interesting conflict and life dilemma. It makes for good drama and there are great roles for actors to play these historical figures who are part of a whole story that many of us werent aware of.
As yet though it’s early day, as the film has no funding, director or cast.