With Lee Daniels‘s film about Martin Luther King Jr. still in limbo after funding dried up, Universal Pictures will make ‘Memphis,’ the drama about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr..
Producing the film will be Scott Rudin, the Oscar-nominated producer of Best Picture candidates ‘The Social Network’ and ‘True Grit,’ with Paul Greengrass serving as writer and director, states Deadline.com.
Production on the film is slated to begin in June.
Greengrass has a good relationship with the studio, having directed ‘The Bourne Supremacy’ (2004), ‘United 93’ (2006), ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’ (2007), and ‘Green Zone’ (2010).
Daniels’ King film, ‘Selma,’ was supposed to be his next film after he directed ‘Precious: Based on the novel ‘Push’ by Saphhire,’ which recieved six Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture.
Even with names like Robert De Niro, Hugh Jackman, Cedric the Entertainer, and David Oyelowo attached in the film and some of the funding coming from The Weinstein Company, not enough money was brought in for a production start.
Daniels has since been attached to direct several films such as ‘The Butler,’ a film about Eugene Allen, an African American servant who worked for 34 years in the White House, and most recently the adaptation of Pete Dexter’s ‘The Paperboy.’
Other MLK projects still in limbo are Oprah Winfrey‘s HBO seven hour miniseries, ‘America: In the King Years,’ and the DreamWorks project that Ronald Harwood is writing the script for.
