If you missed my January 9 post on upcoming slave-themed films that are scheduled to be released in the next 12 to 18 months, click HERE to catch up.

This was one of the films I mentioned on that list.

Recapping… Former NFL linebacker Jeremiah Trotter stars as escaped slave Big Ben Jones, alongside Keith David as Frederick Douglass, in writer/director Thomas K. Phillips' upcoming indie feature film, The North Star, which we first alerted you to last summer, and have been following since then.

The film is based on true events, and tells the story of the aforementioned Big Ben Jones, a slave who makes a daring escape from a Virginia plantation to Buckingham, PA in 1848, and gets helped by local Quakers. 

In addition to Trotter and David, the film's cast includes Clifton Powell, Michael Rapaport, Lynn Whitfield, Michael Jai White, April Woodall, Jermaine Jones, and Alana Lee. 

By the way, as I discovered when I first researched the project last year, in real life, The North Star was the name of an anti-slavery newspaper published by Frederick Douglass in the 1800s.

A first trailer for the film has surfaced and it's embedded below; no word yet on an exact release date.