It likely won’t have a black lead in it, nor will its story center on a character of African descent, but it’s worth mentioning here for what should be obvious reasons…

"K Troop" is a film currently in development that will focus on the early days of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), which Joseph Gordon-Levitt is attached to produce and potentially star in as well. It will be based on upcoming Slate magazine article by Matthew Pearl.

The K Troop was a real-life network of informants, led by a Major Lewis Merrill (the role that Levitt will play if he stars in the film), who risked their lives to expose the Klan; and some of those informants were African Americans, I should note.

The film will be set just after the Civil War, and is currently seeking a screenwriter.

Levitt is producing through his hitRECord company, and Amazon (continuing to be aggressive in its Hollywood dealings) has acquired rights to the feature.

With the record-setting sale of Nate Parker’s Nat Turner film, "The Birth of a Nation," as well as upcoming TV series set during a similar time period and focused on similar subject matter (notably WGN’s "Underground" as well as A&E’s reboot of "Roots"), I’d expect even more like this over the next year or two. I’ll mention, as an aside, that last year (2015) was the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, which I previously argued was, in part, a reason for why, over the last 2 years, we’ve seen a spate of so-called slavery-themed films and TV series announced and/or released.

The "K Troop" news was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter.