Black Klansman, a memoir by police detective Ron Stallworth, who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 70’s, will see his 2014 work adapted for film. Spike Lee and Jordan Peele are joining forces to bring the memoir to life, with Ballers star John Davis Washington starring in the lead role.
THR exclusively reports:
Spike Lee is teaming with Get Out filmmaker Jordan Peele for Black Klansman, the true story of an African-American police officer who infiltrated the KKK.
John David Washington, Denzel Washington’s son and one of the stars of HBO’s Ballers, is in negotiations to star in the dramatic crime thriller that is gearing up to shoot this fall with Focus Features distributing.
Lee will direct and produce the movie with Peele producing via his banner Monkeypaw Productions, along with Sean McKittrick, Shaun Redick and Raymond Mansfield of QC Entertainment and Jason Blum of Blumhouse Productions. The latter group teamed up previously to produce Peele’s groundbreaking horror thriller Get Out, a box-office sensation of early 2017.
Stallworth, very much visibly a Black man, was able to infiltrate a Colorado Springs, Colorado faction of the hate group in 1978 after answering an ad in the paper.
Launching an undercover operation that his superiors initially balked at, Stallworth partnered with a white officer acting as his in-person stand-in while using phone and written correspondence to bolster his investigation.
Black Klansman does not have a release date as of this writing.
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Photo: WENN.com
