Spike Lee to Direct FREDERICK DOUGLASS NOW Film

Variety reports Spike Lee will "Frederick Douglass Now," his third movie adaptation of a one-man stage show by Roger Guenveur Smith, after "A Huey P. Newton Story" and "Rodney King."

"Frederick Douglass Now" will be the latest collaboration between Lee and Smith, who has played distinctive roles in 10 of Lee's movies since "School Daze" in 1988.

Douglass was one of the most extraordinary figures in U.S. history: a self-liberated slave, orator, publisher, and pioneering feminist who pleaded the case for abolition before Abraham Lincoln and made plans with the President for moving freed slaves to the North during the Civil War. Douglass lived from 1818 to 1895.

The film adaptation will be accompanied by jazz artist Branford Marsalis and Smith's longtime collaborator, Marc Anthony Thompson (who composed for "Rodney King" and "A Huey P. Newton Story").

Smith began work on "Frederick Douglass Now" when he was an undergraduate at Occidental College in Los Angeles over twenty years ago. He began performing and updating it ever since.

Read the original story on Variety.