According to Variety, Steven Spielberg has bought the life rights to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the big screen:

A King film has been a longtime dream for Spielberg and DreamWorks CEO and co-chairman Stacey Snider, who has been working feverishly on acquiring the rights since exiting Paramount Pictures and setting up a solo enterprise.

King’s son Dexter, who is chairman and CEO of the King Estate, has been embroiled in a legal tussle with his siblings Bernice King and Martin Luther King III over who controls the personal papers of their late mother, Coretta Scott King, among other things.

This sounds amazing and Spielberg did wonders with The Color Purple, however, there was already a spectacular biopic of Dr. King in 1978 starring Paul Winfield and Cicely Tyson.  Titled King, it was a miniseries, which garnered eight Emmy nominations and won one. Maybe a big screen version will have a different take.

Still, I think there are many other great biopics to tell: Langston Hughes, Bessie Smith, Nat Turner and  Frederick Douglass (I can’t think of a biopic that showed slavery) just to name a few.

TAGS: Biopics

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