Nate Parker To Direct ‘Black & Blue,’ Feature About LAPD Hero Ralph WaddyPosted by Wilson Morales
March 23, 2018
Source: Deadline
Deadline is reporting that Nate Parker (Birth of a Nation) is attached to direct Black & Blue, a feature based on the life of decorated LAPD detective Ralph Waddy. Parker is rewriting a script originally penned by Jim McGrath.
Waddy’s life rights was optioned by ForM.B Entertainment’s Steven Jensen who will also produce along with Darren Enenstein, Shondrella Avery (who will also act in it), Adam R. Sanders and Lenny Rosenberg. They are working to start the picture in July in Los Angeles.
Black & Blue will revolve around Ralph Waddy’s life, a true hero at the LAPD, during what was the most racially charged period in the city’s history as it dealt with the Watts riots, Robert Kennedy’s assassination at the Ambassador Hotel, the rise of the Black Panthers, the capture of the Skid Row Slasher and the Manson Murders (which Waddy connected to Charles Manson and his followers). Waddy was involved in investigating all of these and other high-profile crimes.
The story will also delve into Waddy’s battle to get his father’s approval while struggling between being black or blue in a racially charged time. Whether it was going undercover in the Black Panthers or finding the Skid-Row Slasher and even to the murders tied to the Manson family, no one (including his father) gave him the credit he earned and deserved.
Waddy was a former Marine who was a natural in ferreting things out. He had what was known as “a blue sense.” However, his work did not come without fighting racism — both in the force and on the outside — which was alive and fierce in the 1960s. It was only after he stood toe to toe against white supremacists and Charles Manson himself that he earned a detective shield, becoming the first black Los Angeles cop to receive one.
Waddy passed away last August, leaving behind a wife and three kids.
The project is the first for Parker since he was embroiled in the scandal of rape allegations from his college days; that news surfaced during the release of Birth of a Nation.
