Chadwick Boseman will play legendary attorney Thurgood Marshall in Marshall, a courtroom thriller directed by Reginald Hudlin, the producer of Django Unchained.
The movie is fully financed by by China-based Super Hero Films, Ltd. with Paula Wagner (Mission Impossible, The Last Samurai) producing through her Chestnut Ridge Productions banner. Hudlin will also produce with Jonathan Sanger (The Elephant Man), and Super Hero Films’ Jun Dong.
The film project’s story is described as looking at a provocative case in the early career of one of America’s greatest legal minds.
Marshall is being produced with the full support of the Thurgood Marshall and Samuel Friedman estates, including their children, John W. Marshall and Lauren Friedman.
Marshall was America’s first black justice to sit in the Supreme Court and before that fought for desegregation in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.
The movie’s story, however, goes to the time Marshall was a young lawyer in the days before World War Two.
The storyline, according to the producers: “a nearly bankrupt NAACP sends Marshall to conservative Connecticut to defend a black chauffeur against his wealthy socialite employer in a sexual assault and attempted murder trial that quickly became tabloid fodder. In need of a high profile victory but muzzled by a segregationist court, Marshall is partnered with Samuel Friedman, a young Jewish lawyer who has never tried a case. Marshall and Friedman struggle against a hostile storm of fear and prejudice, driven to discover the truth in the sensationalized trial which helped set the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement to come.”
“Thurgood Marshall was a man who took his life in his hands every time he came to a town to bring justice,” said Hudlin in a statement. “Marshall was a cowboy who used his law books as guns. He was the smartest guy in the room of any room he was in. But he wasn’t a punk and didn’t hesitate to throw a punch if the occasion called for it.”
Michael Koskoff, a trial attorney, wrote the script with his son, Jacob Koskoff, who co-wrote recent Macbeth feature that starred Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard.
Boseman is repped by Michael Greene of Greene & Associates and Management 360.
CAA is repping the film and also reps Hudlin.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
