Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield are in talks to star in Jesus Was My Homeboy, a movie about the assassinated Black Panther activist Fred Hampton.
Ryan Coogler will produce the Warner Bros. project, along with Charles King’s Macro. Shaka King (High Maintenance, People of Earth) will direct and produce from a script he wrote with Will Berson.
If the deal is made, Kaluuya would play Hampton, the enigmatic activist and organizer who quickly ascended the ranks of the Black Panther Party to become the chairman of the Illinois chapter and deputy chairman of the national party before being assassinated at 21 during a coordinated raid by a tactical unit with orders from the FBI and the Chicago Police Department.
Stanfield would play William O’Neal, the FBI informant who infiltrated the Black Panthers and provided information that assisted in Hampton’s assassination.
Jesus Was My Homeboy will look at the rise and death of Hampton through O’Neal’s perspective.
Executive producers are Sev Ohanian, Zinzi Coogler and Macro’s Kim Roth and Poppy Hanks.
Stanfield, repped by CAA, Stark and Ginsburg Daniels, was last seen in The Girl in the Spider’s Web and Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You. The Atlanta breakout has a busy upcoming slate that includes the Netflix comedy Someone Great and the Rian Johnson murder mystery Knives Out.
Kaluuya, who was last seen in Steve McQueen’s Widows, is set for the Universal feature Queen & Slim. He is repped by CAA, the U.K.’s Toika and Management 360.
