Seth MacFarlane, Eisa Davis & Chadwick Boseman Developing Little Rock Nine Drama At UCP

Peter White
·2 min read

Seth MacFarlane has teamed up with She’s Gotta Have It writer Eisa Davis and Chadwick Boseman to develop a drama about Carlotta Walls, the youngest member of the Little Rock Nine.

It marks the Family Guy creator’s second development project with UCP, a division Universal Studio Group, since striking an overall deal with NBCUniversal. Last week, MacFarlane revealed he was adapting Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, with Seth Fisher (The Alienist) as a limited series.

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Based on Carlotta Walls LaNier’s memoir A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High, the series will tell the story of how 14 year-old Carlotta Walls became one of the first black students to attend the all-white Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas following the landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education.

Walls LaNier, who will consult on the project, walked into an unexpectedly violent struggle against integration, which suddenly turned her and the other black students into civil rights icons. For Carlotta – a teenager at the center of a cataclysmic moment in American history – graduating with her diploma meant risking her life. But she searched for a way to keep her humanity intact at school and beyond, losing then regaining her selfhood in a coming of age leavened by humor, family, friendship, and solidarity.

The Untitled Little Rock Nine Project will be written and executive produced by Eisa Davis, a writer and actor who has appeared on God Friended Me, Succession and The Wire. MacFarlane and Huggins will executive produce for Fuzzy Door.

Chadwick Boseman and Logan Coles will executive produce on behalf of X•ception Content – marking their company’s first producing venture for television, having previously produced films including Message from the King and 21 Bridges.

Nick Marell, Coby Greenberg and Joe Micucci will also executive produce.

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