Joseph Gordon-Levitt teams up with Amazon to explore the birth of the KKK

What was sadly only the first incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan began at the close of the American Civil War and was put together by former members of the Confederate army. THR reports that Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Amazon Studios have partnered up to tell the story of the birth of that organization and the group which was assembled to stomp them out.

K TROOP, which Joseph Gordon-Levitt will produce and potentially star in, will be set in the post-Civil War period and chronicle "the rise of the KKK in the American South in 1865 and the man who led the U.S. Army's elite K Troop that stomped out the group in 1871." The film will be based on an upcoming Slate article written by Matthew Pearl but is currently in search of a writer. Should he decide to take on the lead-role, Joseph Gordon-Levitt would star as Major Lewis Merrill, "the leader of the division. An enigmatic man and brilliant military strategist, Merrill built an sprawling network of informants, including a number of local African-Americans, who risked their lives to piece together the secretive workings of the KKK."

Joseph Gordon-Levitt's next project is Oliver Stone's SNOWDEN, a true story which chronicles the life of Edward Snowden, the man who leaked classified information from the National Security Agency to The Guardian several years ago. SNOWDEN is set for a September 16, 2016 release.