Mahershala Ali is weighing whether or not to star in the upcoming prison drama Solitary. According to Variety, the two-time Oscar-winner will definitely be an executive producer on the Fox Searchlight film, though he hasn’t decided if he’ll take on the lead role.
Solitary is based on Albert Woodfox’s 2019 memoir, Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades In Solitary Confinement, My Story of Transformation and Hope, which chronicled the 43 years he spent in solitary confinement at Louisiana’s notorious Angola Prison. Along with fellow inmates Robert King and Herman Wallace, Woodfox was indicted in 1972 for killing a prison corrections officer, which he was convicted of in two years later.
They became known as the Angola Three, who served the longest solitary confinement sentences in U.S. history. By the 1990s, activists began working on appeals, and eventually, Woodfox’s conviction was overturned in 2014. He was released in 2016 after the prosecution took a retrial off the table.
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There’s no director or screenwriter at this point in the project’s development.
Ali started off the year taking home his second Oscar for his role in Green Book. He also had starring roles in Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel and HBO’s third season of True Detective. He’s set to star in the upcoming sci-fi flick Sovereign. Plot details are scarce, but the film hails from A Quiet Place writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods and Utopia director Marc Mundon.
