By RODNEY HO/ rho@ajc.com, originally filed Friday, January 14, 2016
Deadline.com reports that Jamie Foxx is developing a TV series set in Atlanta in the late 1940s.
It's based on "Darktown," an upcoming crime novel by Atlanta-based author Thomas Mullen. (The book is set to come out in September and you can pre-order it now nine months ahead of time for $26.)
Here's the intriguing synopsis of the book and presumably, the TV series as well:
Set in Atlanta in 1948, the story centers on the city's first black police officers — whose hire in the department as a result from pressure on high is met with vitriol from their white counterparts and distrust within their own African American community. In a culture and time when blacks were still relegated to the back of the bus, the officers are treated as second class. They can only patrol in black neighborhoods, are not allowed to arrest white suspects, cannot drive squad cars and cannot use the police headquarters, forced to operate out of the basement of a gym. The book chronicles the case of a black woman who turns up fatally beaten after last seen in a car driven by a white man, which deepens the divide in the police department.
Mullen's "Last Town on Earth" was named Best Debut Novel of 2006 by "USA Today." The book comes out on Simon & Shuster. Sony Pictures Television bought the rights to the book to turn into a TV series.
This sounds like a super cool show to have shot in Atlanta itself but that's way getting ahead of ourselves. We don't even know which network is going to pick it up, if at all.
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