Open Road nabs Thurgood Marshall film

(Special from EURWeb) – Open Road Films has acquired U.S. rights to Marshall, the Thurgood Marshall film that will star Chadwick Boseman as the pioneering lawyer and Supreme Court justice.

Josh Gad, Kate Hudson, Dan Stevens, James Cromwell, Sterling K. Brown and Keesha Sharp round out the cast. Principal photography is underway in Buffalo, NY.

The film focuses on a true incident in Marshall’s life, when he was a young lawyer and long before his appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1941, a nearly bankrupt NAACP sent him to conservative Connecticut to defend a Black chauffeur against his wealthy socialite employer in a sexual assault and attempted murder trial that quickly became tabloid fodder.

In need of a high-profile victory but muzzled by a segregationist court, Marshall is partnered with Samuel Friedman (Gad), a young Jewish lawyer who has never tried a case. Marshall and Friedman struggle against a hostile storm of fear and prejudice, driven to discover the truth in the sensationalized trial that helped set the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement to come.

This article originally published in the June 13, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.