Remember Amazing Grace? That’s the William Wilberforce biopic being produced by Walden Media, with Ioan Gruffudd as the abolitionist Wilberforce and Albert Finney as his fellow anti-slavery activist John Newton.
Well, it turns out there’s going to be another movie about Newton, according to Variety — and since that Wilberforce movie has already claimed the title of Newton’s popular hymn, this new movie has to be called something else:
Mandalay Integrated Media Entertainment and Prelude Pictures have launched development of “The Heart of Man,” centered on 18th century antislavery crusader John Newton.
Mime and Prelude have optioned Lisa and Eric Rice’s script about Newton, who’s best known for writing the song “Amazing Grace.” He was shanghaied into the British Royal Navy, went AWOL, was captured, became a slave himself and took over a slave ship before beginning to campaign for the abolition of slavery.
Prelude execs first came across “The Heart of Man” script several years ago but had not been able to move forward on development because the front page with the authors’ names had been removed and the script hadn’t been registered with the Writers Guild of America. The shingle credited Walden Media president Michael Flaherty for helping track down the writers, following a recent discussion about Walden’s “Amazing Grace” biopic about another antislavery figure, William Wilberforce.
The article goes on to say that Prelude was involved in the marketing of The Passion of the Christ (2004) “via advance sales to faith-based orgs”, while noting that these two companies are also developing a movie about St. Paul called Rabbi Paul.
Thanks to Jeffrey Overstreet for the link.
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