As Lee Daniels was still riding the wave of Precious good will, he began eying a number of civil rights films as his next projects. One was The Butler, which should debut next month assuming all of this title nonsense with Warner Bros. can be ironed out. The other was Selma, a Martin Luther King Jr. biopic that would have been pretty amazing if all had come together. David Oyelowo was attached to play the civil rights leader, with Hugh Jackman, Lenny Kravitz, Cedric the Entertainer, Liam Neeson, and Robert De Niro circling prominent roles. Pretty incredible, but nothing ever really developed, and with Daniels already scratching a historical drama itch with The Butler, an up 'n coming director has come on to make Selma a reality.
A story at Deadline reports that Ava DuVernay will direct the film, having come aboard back in April and already working with Paul Webb on the script. DuVernay made a big splash a couple of years ago with I Will Follow, but it was last year's Indie hit Middle of Nowhere that earned her the Best Director award at Sundance, the first African-American woman to ever win it. She'll have familiar company on Selma as David Oyelowo, her star on Middle of Nowhere, is still on board to play MLK.
The story couldn't come at a more appropriate time, as it deals with the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery to secure voting rights for African-Americans. Those same rights were recently dealt a crucial blow by a recent Supreme Court decision, so a film of this nature could inflame a lot of already-boiling passions.
A start date for Selma hasn't been locked down, but the aim is to try and beat out some of the other MLK projects on the horizon, namely Paul Greengrass' Memphis, which has Forest Whitaker in the lead role.
