There just aren’t enough movies about the Ku Klux Klan, so it’s good news that Amazon is teaming up with Joseph Gordon-Levitt to create K Troop, which will revisit the foundation of the KKK, a hate-based group that definitely deserves more publicity.
The film is not what it at first appears to be, though, because the titular army troop is actually the group that was created in post-Civil War America in order to stop the rise of the KKK. For those not in the know, the KKK began to take shape in 1865, but thanks to K Troop were smashed out of existence just six years later, in 1871. (The group would later reestablish a foothold in 1915, thanks in no small part to D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. Birth of a Nation , of course, is the recent, great film that reclaims the title and focuses on the black perspective in the 1830s.)
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Gordon-Levitt is not only producing but also looking to star as Major Lewis Merrill, who lead the K Troop. Gordon-Levitt is also starring in the upcoming Edward Snowden biopic, Snowden, and also played Philippe Petit in The Walk, so he’s really working out his biographical acting muscles.
Because this deal was just inked, no news of projected release date.