DreamWorks Moving on MLK Project

Posted on Jan 19, 2010

Wikimedia Commons/U.S. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

DreamWorks Studios is moving forward with its planned Martin Luther King Jr. feature film after the project suffered a setback last year because of a dispute between members of the late civil rights leader’s family. On Tuesday, the studio announced that it had hired screenwriter Ron Harwood, who penned the Oscar-winning script for “The Pianist,” to write the screenplay for the MLK movie.  —KA

Reuters via Google News:

DreamWorks announced in May that it had acquired life rights for the slain Nobel Peace Prize laureate, marking the first time a major biographical movie about King had been authorized by his estate.

But the project, to be produced by Steven Spielberg, quickly bogged down over squabbling among his three children over who had the authority to speak for the estate.

[...] However DreamWorks, in announcing Harwood as the screenwriter, indicated that the dispute has been resolved, saying the motion picture was “authorized by the King estate to utilize the intellectual property of Dr. King to create the definitive portrait of his life.”

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