Paul Greengrass heads to Memphis to tackle the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

According to a Vulture exclusive, writer/director Paul Greengrass (UNITED 93, BLOODY SUNDAY) is planning to make his next project MEMPHIS, a film that follows the events leading up to assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Greengrass has apparently written the screenplay based around his own original research, looking at King’s life during the time he organized the sanitation workers of Memphis in the spring of 1968. This is just before his murder on April 4th of that year. Here’s Vulture with more details:

“By the spring of 1968, King’s personal and professional lives were in disarray: His marriage was faltering; he was chain-smoking, boozing, and packing on the pounds. King’s outspokenness on the Vietnam War cost him his relationship with President Johnson, and his newfound interest in labor organization and the urban poor put him on the fringes of the rising Black Power movement.”

While no official negotiations have yet begun on the project, producer Scott Rudin is evidently interested and in discussions with Greengrass to get the ball rolling over at Focus Features. Considering the filmmaker’s success in the past for tackling politically- and socially-conscious material (i.e. his non-Matt Damon stuff) in an almost documentarian manner, the possibilities for MEMPHIS (particularly with all the conspiracy theories surrounding MLK’s murder which Vulture points out) are rather great.