Actress, writer and playwright Eisa Davis, Chadwick Boseman and Seth McFarlane are coming together to produce an untitled, scripted limited series on the Little Rock Nine. The project is based at NBCUniversal’s Universal Content Productions (UCP).

The series is set in 1957 in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. It focuses on 14-year-old Carlotta Walls, one of the first Black students to attend the unsegregated Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas. She and her fellow students walk into a “violent struggle against integration,” turning them into civil rights icons. Walls was the first Black woman to graduate from the high school.

It is based on the memoir from Walls (now known as Carlotta Walls LaNier), titled A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High. She will consult on the project.

Davis, the niece of Angela Davis, is the project’s writer and will executive produce. She won a Pulitzer Price for her play “Bulrusher” and has written for shows like Netflix’s She’s Gota Have It. Acting-wise, she has appeared in shows like Succession and The Wire. 

MacFarlane and Erica Huggins will executive produce through Fuzzy Door, which is under an overall deal at NBCUniversal. Boseman and Logan Coles will executive produce under their X-Ception Content. Nick Marell, Coby Greenberg and Joe Micucci will also executive produce.

 

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