After wowing audiences in “Black Panther” and “Us,” Winston Duke has found his next standout role, as he’s just been cast as political activist Marcus Garvey in Amazon Studios‘ “Marked Man.”
Deadline reports that Duke is set to play Garvey in the upcoming biographical drama “Marked Man” for Amazon. The film is inspired by Colin Grant‘s biography “Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey” and will be written by Kwame Kwei-Armah, while Andrew Dosunmu directs the film. Mark Gordon of Mark Gordon Pictures is producing alongside Jackson Pictures‘s Matt Jackson, Glendon Palmer and Esther Doubles. Robert Teitel and Jackson Pictures’ Joanne Lee will be executive producers, along with Kwei-Armah.
“Marked Man” will be set in the 1920s and follow a young Black man who joins the FBI and infiltrates Garvey’s organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, “testing his loyalty to both race and country as he grows weary of both men’s actions.”
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Garvey has a bit of a complicated legacy. The Jamaican-born activist worked to spread a message of Black pride during the 1920s, in the middle of the Jim Crow era. An NPR profile on Garvey describes the activist’s vision as one where “all people of African origin, on every continent, were united, self-sufficient and proud. It was the manifestation of an idea known as Pan-Africanism.” His message and ideas inspired countless activists from Malcolm X to Nelson Mandela and Bob Marley.
According to Deadline, Duke is expected to join a cast that could also include Jesse Williams and DeWanda Wise, both of whom are in talks to star in the film.