After debuting“13th”, her sprawling and searing documentary about the prison industrial complex, on Netflix, “Selma” filmmaker Ava DuVernay is returning to the streaming juggernaut.
DuVernay will write and direct a new dramatic limited series based on the historic case of The Central Park Five. The narrative will be a five-episode series and for the uninitiated, the infamous true-life Central Park Five case was a huge miscarriage of justice that took place in the late 1980s in New York. The film will dramatize the story of five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem who were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in New York City’s Central Park in 1989.
Our own current President Donald Trump made himself a figure in that story: a few short weeks after the teens were arrested, he spent nearly a $100,000 on full-page ads in all four major New York daily newspapers advocating for the death penalty in the case. Even after they were exonerated, Trump never apologized or acknowledged the men were innocent of the crimes that had them locked them up for years in prison. Ken Burns helmed a terrific documentary on the subject for PBS, simply called “The Central Park Five,” and it is definitely worth the watch.
“I had an extraordinary experience working with Netflix on ’13th’ and am overjoyed to continue this exploration of the criminal justice system as a narrative project with Cindy Holland and the team there,” DuVernay said in a statment. “The story of the men known as Central Park Five has riveted me for more than two decades. In their journey, we witness five innocent young men of color who were met with injustice at every turn – from coerced confessions to unjust incarceration to public calls for their execution by the man who would go on to be the President of the United States.”
“This is one of the most talked-about cases of our time and Ava’s passionate vision and masterful direction will bring the human stories behind the headlines to life in this series,” said Cindy Holland, Vice President, Original Content for Netflix. “After powerfully reframing the public conversation about criminality and injustice in 13TH, Ava now turns a new lens to a case that exposes deep flaws in our criminal justice system.”
Each part of the series will focus on one of the five teenagers from Harlem — Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise — who were put on trial. The series will span from the spring of 1989, when each were first questioned about the incident, to 2014 when they were exonerated and a settlement was reached with the city of New York.
No word on when this one will shoot, as DuVernay has to finish “A Wrinkle In Time” for Disney first, but suffice to say this will likely be a must-watch TV event when it arrives.