Over the weekend, Deadline Hollywood broke a business-related story about actor Robert De Niro switching agencies and returning to CAA, which normally wouldn’t be the type of news we cover on ComingSoon.net. One little snippet in the article that seems to have slipped through the cracks is actually big news, and that is that Robert De Niro has been attached to play Alabama Governor George Wallace (pictured) in the Civil Rights movie Selma, which is likely to be the next movie from Lee Daniels, director of Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire.
The article mentions a few of De Niro’s projects including “a showy role playing Gov George Wallace in ‘Precious’ director Lee Daniels’ next pic about desegregation,” Paul Weitz’s Another Night in Suck City with Casey Affleck, and even possibly a sequel to De Niro’s earlier comedy Midnight Run.
As far as Selma, ComingSoon.net spoke briefly to Daniels about the project last October, which you can read here, and the attachment of De Niro to such a prominent role certainly bodes well for the project moving forward soon, especially with the amount of good will Daniels has earned from the awards buzz that Precious has been garnering over the last few months.
Wallace was the controversial political figure who refused to back down while the rest of the country started to dissolve the segregation of blacks and whites, leading to three famous marches by Martin Luther King, Jr. and his movement between Selma and Montgomery, Alabama to protest Wallace’s unwillingness to give blacks their rights.
Some of the other key roles that need to be cast in Daniels’ film include President Lyndon Johnson and of course, Martin Luther King, Jr., but with the likes of De Niro on board, you have to imagine Daniels will be pulling some big names into the project.
