With his career bubbling along nicely – he’ll be both a superhero and part of much-anticipated drama this year alone – Michael B. Jordan continues to seek out films that matter to him. He’s part of the cast for a new memoir adaptation, **Just Mercy.
Short Term 12 writer/director Destin Daniel Cretton is adapting Bryan Stevenson’s memoir Just Mercy: A Story Of Justice And Redemption alongside Andrew Lanham and will call the shots. Production company Broad Green Pictures won the rights to the book in a competitive bidding war and is now developing the film.
The story will follow Stevenson’s work as a young lawyer who founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a company dedicated to defending the poor, the wrongly convicted, women and children. One of his earliest cases was Walter McMillian, sentenced to die for a murder he insists he didn’t commit and at the centre of swirling mire of conspiracy and political double-dealing. “Bryan’s story hit me harder than anything I’ve read in a long time,” Cretton says in a statement carried by Variety. “I’m humbled and honoured to have the opportunity to bring his story to the screen.”
Jordan will be back on our screens on August 6 with Fantastic Four, and he has the lead in Rocky spin-off Creed, which will arrive on November 27.