Morris Chestnut has signed on to help produce Greenwood Avenue, a film about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, Deadline has learned.
Written by Daryl Spivey, the feature centers on a Philadelphia lawyer who follows a mysterious lead to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she "discovers the events of the Black Wall Street massacre of 1921 and her family’s connection to it." The announcement comes at the 100-year anniversary of the June 1, 1921 massacre, where hundreds of Black Tulsans were killed and lost their homes and property at the hands of their white neighbors. Greenwood Avenue is slated to begin filming this fall.
In other news, Atlanta's Brian Tyree Henry has set another project with FX. According to Variety, he and Kate Mara will star in Class of ’09. The eight-episode limited series, set in a near future where the "U.S. criminal justice system has been transformed by artificial intelligence," follows a group of FBI agents who graduated from Quantico in 2009. Henry will play Tayo Miller, a "brilliant and unorthodox" agent who hopes to change the way the FBI handles cases. A release date for Class of ’09 has yet to be announced.
Finally, Ethan Hawke's Showtime limited series The Good Lord Bird has been awarded a Peabody. Based on James McBride’s book of the same name, the series centered on abolitionist John Brown, played by Hawke, and a 14-year-old freed slave who who helps him. In a video for the Peabodys’ virtual awards ceremony, Chris Rock was shown presenting the award to Hawke. According to the Peabody jury, The Good Lord Bird "smartly suggests that Brown’s ultimate mission was less about starting a successful slave insurrection as it was the public performance of guilt, redemption, and salvation for the souls of white Americans."