What happens when Ghost Dog meets Malcolm X? One hell of an argument! That’s what we’ll get when Forest Whitaker takes on Denzel Washington in The Great Debate, a “fact-based” drama that Washington will direct next month in Louisiana for the Weinstein Co., says Variety.

Washington will play a hard-headed, no-nonsense debate team coach of a small East Texas college, who challenges Harvard’s champion debate squad in the 1930s. Washington will use his powerful clout to use The Great Debate as a platform to prove that he is as capable as a director as he is an actor. Whitaker will play the father of a debater who butt’s heads with Washington for the loyalty of his son. Expect the metaphoric debate to be as heated as the literal debate.

Although the plot may sound like a debate version of arm wrestling for the custody of a child, Oprah Winfrey and Kate Forte, as well as Todd Black and Joe Roth, are betting on as producers of the Robert Eisele authored script. Lord knows the Weinsteins need a winner after the Grindhouse double feature tanked over the weekend.

Production will begin once Whitaker is done with the in-production indie Winged Creatures, as Washington just wrapped American Ganster with Russell Crow and Ridley Scott directing.