Chris Rock To Direct Martin Luther King Jr. Biopic

Chris Rock will be next to bring the story of Martin Luther King Jr. to the big screen.

According to Deadline, the comedian will direct a biopic on the activist executive produced by Steven Spielberg. Universal Pictures is backing the project after optioning the John Eig-authored biography King: A Life. Described as a “definitive cinematic biopic,” the film will be produced by Amblin Partners, with Kristie Macosko Krieger serving as producer along with Rock.

Universal’s Senior Vice President of Production Development Ryan Jones will oversee the biopic on behalf of the studio.

According to its official description, King: A Life is a “landmark biography” that goes beyond other penned works exploring the life and impact of the civil rights leader. The New York Times best-seller, released in May 2023, “is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.―and the first to include recently declassified FBI files.”

The project may be the first on the Atlanta-born minister to use his actual famed speeches, as Spielberg owns the legal rights to Martin Luther King Jr.’s world-shifting words. According to The Hollywood Reporter, in 2009, the King Estate licensed the speeches to DreamWorks and Warner Bros. for a project from Spielberg that never came to fruition.

Ava DuVernay’s acclaimed biopic Selma (2014), documents King’s three marches in Alabama pushing for the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In the film, the first major fictional drama to center on King’s life and work, DuVernay was forced to substitute words to reflect his rhetoric without using his speeches verbatim. In the year following Selma, Spielberg approached its star, David Oyelowo, about potentially reprising the historic role.

“‘My goodness, David, that’s one of the best things I have ever seen. You really inspired me to take another look at my Dr. King film.’ And then he goes, ‘You would reprise the role, right? You would do it again,'” shared the actor with Esquire.

“My stomach all but fell out of my body. I was just like, ‘Oh, my lord.’ That was quite a mountain to climb. Not only did [the] idea of being asked to do it again give me pause, but here he is, Steven Spielberg of all people, [asking] if I entertain doing it again. I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

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