Samuel L. Jackson gave a shot at playing a down-on-his-luck real life person in Resurrecting the Champ, the 2007 movie that barely anyone noticed as it came and went. Apparently Jackson won't stop until he gets some attention for this specific kind of role. He's signed on to star in Same Kind of Different as Me, based on a bestseller about an ex-con drifter who develops a friendship with a wealthy art dealer.

Variety isn't giving many details beyond that, but Amazon reviews describe Jackson's character, Denver Moore, as "modern-day slave," who had worked as a sharecropper picking cotton outside of Forth Worth and eventually opted for a life of homelessness instead. Ron Hall, the art dealer character, begins volunteering at a local homeless shelter and strikes up a friendship with Moore.

It may be completely unfair of me, but I can't help thinking of The Soloist, the soppy Joe Wright movie in which rich white man Robert Downey Jr. becomes friends with brilliant homeless man Jamie Foxx. Yes, these stories can be inspirational, especially if they're true, but they can also be mawkish and condescending. No telling which side of things this will fall on, but it seems foolish to get our hopes up.