Justin Chadwick will direct Anthony Mackie in a Johnnie Cochran biopic that focuses on a 1981 police brutality case
First announced earlier this year, a Johnnie Cochran biopic is on the way that has Anthony Mackie (Triple 9, Captain America: Civil War) attached to headline as the famous litigator. Deadline today reports that the project has today found a director with The Other Boleyn Girl and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom’s Justin Chadwick signing on to helm.
Although his name has become synonymous with the landmark O.J. Simpson murder trial in the mid 1990s, the Johnnie Cochran biopic will look back further, focusing on the 1983 Ron Settles case. Ron Settles was a 21-year-old African American running back at California State University when he was arrested for speeding by California’s Signal Hill Police Department. The morning following his arrest, Ron Settles was found dead in his jail cell, beaten and hanged. Although the police claimed Settles’ death was a suicide, evidence to the contrary led to a civil suit against the Signal Hill PD. While no one was ultimately prosecuted, Settles’ family was awarded a $760,000 settlement.
Anthony Mackie has been busy as of late, appearing last year in David Gordon Green’s Our Brand is Crisis, Jessie Nelson’s Meet the Coopers and Jonathan Levine’s The Night Before as well in two Marvel Studios films (Joss Whedon’s Avengers: Age of Ultron and Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man). In addition to this summer’s Civil War, Mackie has, in 2016, headlined John Hillcoat’s Triple 9 and starred as Martin Luther King, Jr. opposite Bryan Cranston’s Lyndon B. Johnson in Jay Roach’s recent HBO telefilm All the Way.
From a spec script by David McMillan, the Johnnie Cochran biopic will be produced by Anthony Mackie alongside Robbie Brenner, Jeff Kwatinetz, Kevin McKeon and Jason Spire. McMillan himself will serve as the film’s executive producer.
(Photo Credit: Lexi Jones / WENN.com)
