With Ava DuVernay‘s A Wrinkle In Time now in cinemas, attention for the director has quickly shifted to her next project: a five episode limited series for Netflix, titled Central Park Five. The series will focus on the five men who were infamously wrongly convicted of raping a jogger in 1989. Their initial confessions were later confirmed to have been coerced, but they spent 6 to 13 years in prison.
The project was announced last summer, and despite it being classed as a five episode limited series, DuVernay describes it as a five hour film. Speaking on the Playback podcast, DuVernay confirmed that she will begin shooting this summer, and that she will reunite with her Selma and Middle Of Nowhere cinematographer, Bradford Young:
“I had a writers room going while I was in post on Wrinkle. I’m rewriting some stuff, writing three of the five episodes, and we’re casting. Our breakdown just went out for the five boys which is really hard to find, those five young boys. They were 13 and 14 when they were convicted of a crime they didn’t commit and sent off to all of these horrible places. So I’ll be doing that next.
Five hours for Netflix, and we start that in the summer. Bradford Young’s shooting it […] We’re just gonna get back into it and tell these stories of these families, it’s really the families. But it’s a beautiful story”.
The reunion with Young is great news, as he’s recently become one of the most sought after and acclaimed cinematographers, having recently worked on A Most Violent Year and Arrival, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. He’s also been busy working on Solo: A Star Wars Story.
DuVernay also added that each hour of the Netflix series will focus on one of the five men convicted: “Each boy is the center for an hour, so they each get their own hour as the film is progressing. So the case is progressing but each hour another boy’s more prominent until you get to the fifth boy at the end”.
Whether one dubs it a film or a series, Central Park Five and its renewed relevance will absolutely be one of the most anticipated Netflix releases of 2019.
#Peace.Love.CentralParkFive
