Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire director Lee Daniels revealed, in a USA Today article on the Oscar-nominee’s events this week, that Hugh Jackman will star in his Civil Rights movie Selma, which he hopes to start shooting in May.
On Monday night, Daniels worked on the film. “I had to do a lot of homework on the script, and I spent a lot of time writing. I feel like I’m caught up a little bit with that,” he said. “I have to really start casting the movie because we’re shooting it soon. The only person I’ve nailed in for sure is Hugh Jackman. It’s all over the place.”
It was previously reported that Robert De Niro was going to play Alabama Governor George Wallace, but that might not be the case now that Daniels says only Jackman is confirmed.
Selma, Alabama was the place where segregation in the South was at its worst, leading to a march that ended in violence, forcing a famous statement by President Lyndon B. Johnson that ultimately led to the signing of the Civil Rights Act.
“It’s a moment in time in Martin Luther King and LBJ’s (life) around the signing of the Civil Rights. It’s a snapshot of the march,” Daniels told us last October. “It’s really Lyndon Johnson’s story. Martin Luther King is a part of it, but it’s really the arc of a man that starts out as a racist who is forced to look at himself in the mirror and then ultimately side with King. It’s really a journey of a white cat and how he sneers at tradition and against George Wallace, against everybody, says, ‘Uh-uh.'”
