Director Ava DuVernay’s Martin Luther King, Jr. biopic Selma just got a big boost through a distribution deal with Paramount.
Produced by Oprah Winfrey, Selma will be the third narrative feature from DuVernay. Since her 2012 Sundance Best Director prize for Middle of Nowhere, DuVernay’s work has been for the small screen, the sports documentary Venus VS. and an episode of Scandal.
Selma is one of several MLK films currently in the works, but Deadline reports that Winfrey’s participation is putting the production on the fast track. Though films about American history tend to do poorly at the international box office (for obvious reasons), Winfrey helped made Lee Daniels’ The Butler a global hit.
Winfrey is currently involved in another MLK project, the miniseries America: In the King Years for HBO.
