Lee Daniels NewsDaniels Considering Film Adaptation Of Controversial ‘Scottsboro Boys’ Broadway Musical
by Wilson Morales
December 3, 2010
After protests and low ticket sales, the critically-acclaimed (by mainstream critics) Broadway musical ‘The Scottsboro Boys’ is closing.
And with all of that drama, Academy Award nominated filmmaker Lee Daniels is considering taking on the controversial subject matter to the big screen.
The Philadelphia native — who crafted gritty fare such as ‘Precious,’ ‘Shadowboxer’ and ‘The Woodsman’ on celluloid — has seen the production several times and is in early conversations to develop it into a movie, reported Deadline.com .
The musical will be closing December 12.
“We couldn’t pay our bills,” producer Barry Weissler said in a telephone interview to Bloomberg.com .
‘The Scottsboro Boys’ is based on the 1930s legal case where nine African American men in Alabama were wrongly accused of a raping two white women. It won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical and the Outer Critics Circle Award when it originated off-Broadway. The minstrel show transferred to The Great White Way Oct. 31. It reportedly cost $5 million to stage.
The musical’s director, Susan Stroman, will be an executive producer on the film and producer Barry Weissler will also be part of the producing team.
There’s no telling what project Daniels is actually lined up to do. He’s been in discussion with Sony Pictures to helm ‘The Butler’ the story of Eugene Allen, an African American servant in the White House over 34 years, who had a unique perspective on the civil rights struggle and was invited back after retirement to witness the inauguration of the first African American president, Barack Obama.
This was after plans to do the Martin Luther King Jr. Civil Rights March film, ‘Selma,’ was shelved after funding couldn’t be completed for production. Some big names like Hugh Jackman, Liam Neeson and Robert De Niro were initially attached to it.
Let’s hope Daniels can find a get a distributor with deep pockets to finance the film and get it in theaters.
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