25 years after playing the role that helped his career in A time to kill, Matthew McConaughey may be getting ready to make his return to the courtroom. Sources tell Deadline, HBO acquired the rights to the John Grisham novel, A time for grace, the sequel to Grisham’s classic novel, and develops it as a limited series with McConaughey in final negotiations to portray the role of defense attorney Jake Brigance. According to sources, the series will be 8-10 deliveries with Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who served as Warner Bros. executive in the 90s. A time to kill was green light, is producing.
HBO / WB TV did not comment.
The original novel takes place in Clanton, Mississippi and follows a fearless young lawyer when he defends a black man accused of killing two white men who raped his ten-year-old daughter. The case turned the small town into a cauldron of tension that included the incitement to violent retaliation and revenge by the Ku Klux Klan. The novel was another Grisham hit and Warner Bros. quickly turned the book into a movie, by tapping the late Joel Schumacher to play a cast in the A-list and star in the movie. While the film was filled with a number of movie stars such as Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson and Kiefer and Donald Sutherland, Schumacher decided to tap McConaughey, a family member who was unknown at the time, to play. The film became a hit and placed McConaughey on the map of prominent men and is still considered one of the best Grisham adaptations to date.
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In A time for grace, Brigance finds himself in a deeply divisive trial when the court appoints him a lawyer for Drew Gamble, a timid sixteen-year-old boy accused of murdering a local deputy. Many in Clanton want a speedy trial and the death penalty, but Brigance digs in and discovers that there is more to the story than meets the eye. Brigance’s commitment to save Drew from the gas chamber puts his career and the safety of his family at stake.
A time for grace is actually the third book by Grishams that contains the Brigance character with the second being Sycamore-ry, which was released in 2013. There was never a discussion about adapting the book, but when Grisham announced that a third Brigance novel was on the way in 2020, McConaughey was attracted to the idea of returning to the role that helped her profession.
Although McConaughey spent a lot of time last year promoting his memoirs Greenlights on his social media, he did take time in the fall to promote A time for grace on his Instagram before its release, many fans gave hope that they would repeat the role to him one day, not knowing that the Oscar winner was already in talks to return. As for the decision to follow the limited series route rather than make it into a movie, the decision was made to let the whole story unfold and dive deeper into all the characters involved in the book, rather than to make a two-hour long film. It’s also McConaughey’s return to HBO after following his Emmy-nominated work as Rust Cohle in the hit series. True detective.
Sources say that HBO is now meeting with writers to set up the series and add that there is also no director attached at the moment, so production is still a way to give up. McConaughey is repeated by WME.