Paul Greengrass has been playing movie merry-go-rounds in the last year, being attached or rumoured for a fourth Bourne film, Fantastic Voyage, Treasure Island and Cleopatra, among others, although it appears he’s now left all those behind. Now there’s a new possibility, as Vulture reports Greengrass wants to write and direct Memphis.
The film would be about the events that lead up to Martin Luther King’s assassination by James Earl Ray. It would certainly be interesting, as most looks at the man have steered clear of the months leading up to MLK’s death, due to the fact he was at a low ebb, with his marriage of the rocks, his influence in the halls of powers diminished (partly because he was very vocal in his opposition to the Vietnam War), a reported alcohol problem and he had even because a divisive figure within the civil rights movement.
Greengrass would apparently base the film on his own research, looking at King’s life while trying to organise the citys sanitation workers in spring of 1968, just before his murder on April 4 of that year. However, while there have been almost as many consipracy theories about the MLK assassination as there have about JFK’s, Greengrass is known for his very human portrayals, which concentrate of the personal and what actually happened rather than heading into a controversial look at why.
All that said, as the director seems to get attached to a new movie a week, don’t be shocked if in a few days time he’s going to be doing something else and we never hear of this again.