Chris Rock In Talks To Direct MLK Biopic

Comedian Chris Rock has moved on from the Oscars drama with Will Smith and now he is in talks to direct a big screen biopic on civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King.  In collaboration with executive producer Steven Spielberg, Rock, 58, is in final talks to direct and produce a biopic about the late civil-rights activist for Universal Pictures, according to a release obtained by PEOPLE.

Kristie Macosko Krieger and Amblin Partners will co-produce alongside Rock, while Universal’s Senior Vice President of Production Development Ryan Jones will oversee, per the release.

The film will be based on Jonathan Eig’s New York Times best-selling biography, King: A Life.

Released earlier this year, the book “follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, [as] Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father — as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr,” an official synopsis for the book reads.