Lawrence "LAW" Watford Aquires TV, Film, and Book Rights to Martin Luther King Jr. Biography
An exclusive with Deadline has announced that the rights to the biography The Seminarian: Martin Luther King Jr. Comes of Age have been optioned by Lawrence "LAW" Watford's Divine Write Pictures. As stated in the exclusive, "Watford is planning to adapt the book for television via his Tyler Street Films partnership with Jack Manning III and Tiffany Elle Burgess". Tyler Street Films has also worked on projects including Catharsis, Flipped, and Skin Like Mine.
The biography by Patrick Parr focuses on MLK's time at Crozer Theological Seminary and his relationship with the school dietitian's Daughter, Betty Moitz, a white woman. It is this relationship that drew Watford's attention to this specific story. He told Deadline, "I'm always attracted to stories that have incongruence as a central theme...so when I first read about Dr. King's relationship with Betty Moitz in the press, I was intrigued- as I imagine most people probably were." This lesser told story is sure to spark the intrigue of many.
This drive to tell stories has been a lifelong path for Watford. In an interview with Film Daily he said, "I feel like I've always been a storyteller. As a kid I'd take my toys and make these great dramatic and elaborate storylines that usually resulted with one or more of my Transformers or G.I. Joe characters dying..." Even as a child, Watford was pushing stories to the limit, striving to tell those that remain relatively untold.
This drive to interest and enlighten remains prevalent in this upcoming series. Watford expressed to Deadline his passion for painting a more complex picture of Martin Luther King Jr. He said:
We're always aware of the ways in which our heroes have impacted us during our formative years, but it's rare that we get an authentic glimpse into the events and people who shaped them into these legendary people we celebrate today...We also never get an opportunity to envision them, truly and fully as human beings. So the goal is to introduce us to the variety of people that influenced MLK's life during that time.
We are excited to see where this story will go!
