Bass Reeves has been in the news lately as David Oyelowo is set to play the legendary lawman in 1883: The Bass Reeves Story, a spinoff of the Yellowstone franchise. But that isn’t the only Bass Reeves project in the works. Deadline has reported that Morgan Freeman is developing his own Bass Reeves series for Amazon, something he’s been considering for nearly thirty years.
Titled Twin Territories, the series will follow “America’s #1 lawman as he and the brash Irishman Chauncey Lee are faced with the almost impossible task of imposing the rule of law in the most dangerous place on earth, contending with outlaw bandits so bold they post their own wanted posters; thriving native cultures pushed to the brink; and hordes of illegal settlers with nothing to lose, in a titanic battle for the future of a state, and a nation.” The series will also “examine the methods Reeves used to bring justice to the Indian Territories, and the pivotal role he played in birthing the state of Oklahoma.” Morgan Freeman has spent decades exploring the story and later joined forces with Ben Watkins (Hand of God) and Malcolm Spellman (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), who had been developing their own take on the legend of Bass Reeves. Freeman believes that Twin Territories has the potential to be a “game-changer” with its depiction of historical events.
I grew up in the movies watching everything, particularly Westerns, and one of the things that really busted me up was the fact that if you were Black in one of these Westerns, you’d better be a comedian. You’d better be funny. There were no [Black] heroes, and that’s not American history at all, so here’s a chance to redo that, to straighten out some of the kinks in history.
When Morgan Freeman first began exploring the series decades, he thought he would play Bass Reeves, but it seems that there’s still a role for him to play in Twin Territories. “We haven’t told him all the details of this role, so some of this is a surprise for him,” Ben Watkins said, “but we’ve created a great role for him that is sort of a connection between the pre-Civil War and post-Civil War. He’s a mentor figure for whoever plays Bass Reeves.” As for the Yellowstone Bass Reeves series, Watkins says that there’s plenty of room for more stories. “I think we all agree Bass Reeves was a hero who deserves all the stories to be told,” Watkins said. “There should be a hundred versions of Bass Reeves out already, and we’ve never looked at the fact that there are other projects out there as a bad thing. We think he is a historical figure that deserves that type of recognition across the board, but we also know that our particular way of telling it is going to be very authentic and very rooted in the Black American experience. So, we feel like it holds a special place.“