By Once he’s finished beserker raging his way through Japan as Wolverine, Hugh Jackman will be returning to more sober cinematic material with Martin Luther King Jr. assassination story, Orders To Kill. Jackman will play activist and lawyer William Pepper, who argued that James Earl Ray was a stooge to cover up a government-mandated assassination motivated by silencing King’s opposition to the Vietnam War. In 1999, Pepper successfully filed a wrongful death suit in the courts in defence of Ray, which will likely form the movie’s climax.
The movie will be based on Pepper’s book and directed by Lee Daniels, best known for Precious, with Hanna Weg providing the screenplay. Daniels and Jackman have previously attempted to get a movie off the ground based on King’s civil rights march in Alabama, but struggled to find financing. A successful box-office take for Orders To Kill could put that project back on track, perhaps as a pseudo-prequel.
[via Collider]