With Adam McKay's Dick Cheney biopic casting its versions of the figures involved in sending the United States to war with Iraq in 2003, the vital role of then-Secretary of Defense Colin Powell was filled for that cast by none other than Boo 2! A Madea Halloween star Tyler Perry. But now the role had been cast for a second time, albeit for a totally different project, as Marshall director Reginald Hudlin is making his own biopic focused on Powell, and he's drafted Morgan Freeman to take the lead.
Simply titled Powell, Hudlin's film is going to focus on a very similar subject, as it moves through Colin Powell's term as Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush, between 2001 and 2005. The movie is specifically going to center around one particular moment in Secretary Powell's Bush administration tenure, giving Freeman to bring to dramatic life to the crucial speech that Powell gave at the UN in 2003. A speech that, as intelligence and even Colin Powell himself admitted, was based on fabricated evidence designed to support the regime change that ended Saddam Hussein's reign of power.
While most of his career won't be on display in Powell, you can bet that Morgan Freeman will use every moment of it as inspiration for his performance as a man who, for all intents and purposes, seemed to slowly become on the outs with the administration he served. A Republican stalwart since his time as a National Security Adviser to President Reagan, Colin Powell would become a star on the rise in the party of Conservatives, eventually becoming the Secretary of the Joint Chiefs during the First Iraq War, and eventually the Secretary of Defense.
The relationship between Colin Powell and the George W. Bush White House is a subject that on its own would make for a hell of a film. This is probably what Reginald Hudlin is counting on with Powell, as well as the fact that while there's been plenty of reaction films, parodies and biopics made within that administration, Powell's career is a severely overlooked subject in that field. While Adam McKay will touch upon some of the same material in his Dick Cheney biopic, it's to be assumed that Powell would be a more serious and sober take on the man's involvement in the history in the works.
With the Academy Award winning talent of Morgan Freeman, and Variety reporting that the script previously made it onto the 2011 Black List of unproduced screenplays, Powell looks to have given Reginald Hudlin a fantastic pedigree to start off his biopic project. Powell has no production or release date in mind, but if you're looking for a more immediate biopic fix, you can take a look for one on our 2017 release schedule.
