Chadwick Boseman
Chadwick Boseman

Having already played Jackie Robinson, James Brown, and, in an upcoming film, Thurgood Marshall (directed by Reginald Hudlin), Chadwick Boseman is taking on another real-life personality in Reverend Jeffrey Brown, the Baptist minister who was one of the co-founders of the Boston Ten Point Coalition, a faith-based group that was an integral part of the “Boston Miracle” in the 1990s, during which violent crime in the city declined by around 80 percent.



Paramount Pictures has picked up a pitch based on the life of Brown from Boseman and scribe Logan Coles, which the pair will co-write as a potential starring vehicle for the actor.

They will also produce alongside Ivan Reitman and Ali Bell of Montecito Pictures.

Tom Pollock will exec produce.

(Boston, MA, 07/24/14) Rev. Jeffrey Brown, Associate Pastor of Twelfth Baptist Church is seen on Thursday, July 24, 2014. Staff photo by Christopher Evans
(Boston, MA, 07/24/14) Rev. Jeffrey Brown, Associate Pastor of Twelfth Baptist Church. Photo by Christopher Evans

Boseman will next be seen on the big screen in Reginald Hudlin’s “Marshall,” playing Thurgood Marshall, in a film that focuses on a case early in the career of the Supreme Court justice. He will also begin filming Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther,” which is due out in early 2018.

Below, watch Reverend Jeffrey Brown give a TEDTalk in 2015 on his life’s work as “an architect of the ‘Boston miracle’,” getting his start as a “bewildered young pastor watching his Boston neighborhood fall apart around him, as drugs and gang violence took hold of the kids on the streets.” He would work directly with those kids in reducing violence in their own neighborhoods.