AMC Developing Series Based on Black Lives Matter Book ‘They Can’t Kill Us All’
AMC is set to develop a new drama series based on Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery’s bestselling nonfiction book about the Black Lives Matter movement, They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice, Deadline.com reports.
The book, published in 2016 by Little, Brown & Company, looks at the effects of decades of racially biased policing on numerous institutions, including education, the work force and the criminal justice system, and is based on Lowery’s reported accounts. The book starts with Mike Brown’s killing in Ferguson in 2014, and according to Deadline.com, the companion series will “reflect current events and race relations through the stories and voices of fictional characters.”
Lowery tweeted about the impending series Tuesday, noting that he is “excited to be exploring this new project with the amazing @MorganicInk.”
book is out in paperback today, and excited to be exploring this new project with the amazing @MorganicInk https://t.co/x9GfjYPSEU
— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) September 12, 2017
The reporter’s work earned him a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2016 after he led the Post‘s “Fatal Force” project in 2015, a database that tracked 990 police shootings. Writer LaToya Morgan will adapt his book for the screen, and will executive produce alongside Makeready co-founder and CEO Brad Weston.
AMC’s news comes shortly after Amazon’s announcement that it is developing its own series, the politically charged Black America, an alt-history series that imagines how the country would be if black people had been rewarded their own portion of the South as reparations following the Civil War.
HBO announced its own, more controversial, alt-history series in July, a drama from the creative minds behind Game of Thrones, imagining a country in which the South successfully seceded from the Union and slavery has evolved into a modern institution.
A viral social media movement protesting Confederate (“#NoConfederate”) erupted on Twitter not long afterward, led by April Reign, the woman behind the “#OscarsSoWhite” protest back in 2015.
In a statement, HBO executives asked viewers to give the series a chance. “We have great respect for the dialogue and concern being expressed around Confederate,” the statement read. “We have faith that [writers] Nichelle, Dan, David and Malcolm will approach the subject with care and sensitivity. The project is currently in its infancy so we hope that people will reserve judgment until there is something to see.”