It has been some time since we've heard anything about Orders to Kill, the biopic centered on the conspiracy surrounding Martin Luther King's assassination. Antoine Fuqua (The Equalizer) was briefly attached, but the film got closer to happening with Lee Daniels directing and Hugh Jackman as one of the stars. That obviously never happened, and now Millennium Films may be going back to the drawing board with Fuqua.
A story over at The Tracking Board says Fuqua has "begun conversations" to return to the film, which features a screenplay by Hanna Weg (Septembers of Shiraz) that adapts William F. Pepper's memoir. Pepper was a corporate lawyer who quit his job and set out to prove the U.S. government was involved in the murder of King, who he happened to be friends with. Part of that was proving the innocence of James Earl Ray, the man convicted in King's death. In 1999, Pepper represented the King family in a wrongful death lawsuit that found the government complicit in the assassination, setting Ray up as the scapegoat.
Back in 2009 Fuqua directed a short film for CNN titled "From MLK to Today", so he's always had an interest in making movies about the civil rights leader. This would make for an interesting companion to Selma if it could ever get off the ground, so let's hope that can happen soon. Fuqua's next film is the boxing drama, Southpaw, and he's reuniting with Denzel Washington for a remake of The Magnificent Seven.
