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Lee Daniels and Hugh Jackman Team for MLK Film 'Orders to Kill'?

by Ethan Anderton
July 31, 2012
Source: LA Times

Though director Lee Daniels and Hugh Jackman were looking to team for the civil rights film Selma, the project fell apart a couple years ago. However, the duo haven't given up on setting a movie in that time period as the LA Times has word that they two will team up for Orders to Kill, a very unique approach to chronicling the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. While everyone knows that James Earl Ray has been credited with the iconic civil rights leader's untimely death, attorney and activist William Pepper has said for decades that Ray recanted his confession and died arguing his innocence. More below!

Jackman would play Pepper in a film that shows his efforts as "a one-man campaign, interviewing witnesses and building support for his theory that other interests, including those from the U.S. government, were behind the 1968 Memphis killing." Essentially, it's a film that tells an alternate side of the assassination story, much in the same what that Oliver Stone's JFK painted a picture of conspiracy in the assassination of the young President of the United States of America. It's sure to inspire controversy, but Pepper's seemingly wild thoughts didn't go unnoticed as MLK's song Dexter King has become convinced by Pepper's crusade that the bullet that killed his father came from a Memphis police officer. Of course, Pepper has also been adamant about conspiracies behind 9/11 and more, so it's hard to take him too seriously.

However, a wrongful death lawsuit was filed against a man and unknown co-conspirators, filed by the King family and argued by Pepper, and that trial will serve as a climactic point in the story on screen. The work of King and those surrounding him seems to be a passion for both Daniels and Jackman as the actor was going to star in the director's film, about the famous civil rights march in Alabama, as a racist sheriff who was leading the charge against MLK. It sounds like quite a powerful drama, and something very different from Daniels launch into filmmaking with Precious, so count me in and hoping this one gets off the ground.

UPDATE: We've received word that Lee Daniels apparently isn't involved in this project, so we're not sure where LA Times got their info, but apparently it's false. Whether or not Hugh Jackman is still involved in this project has not been clarified yet. We'll try to keep you updated with any further details.

Filed under Casting, Development, Movie News

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