Two-time Academy Award nominee Mary J. Blige (Mudbound) is set to star alongside Tulsa King‘s Jay Will in Rob Peace, a drama in the works. According to Deadline, through her banner Blue Butterfly, she’ll also serve as executive producer of the film, written and directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Based on Jeff Hobbs’ best-selling biography The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League, the film follows a young man who grew up in a crime-ridden section of Newark, NY and later graduated from Yale with degrees in molecular biophysics and biochemistry earned on scholarship.
Peace led a dual life living in the insular world of academia and as a lab researcher of cancer and infectious diseases, while at the same time making six figures from the sale of marijuana. He was killed in a drug-related shooting in 2011.
Blige will play Rob’s mother, Jackie, with Ejiofor portraying his father.
Los Angeles Media Fund is producing Rob Peace, in association with Hill District Media and Participant. Producers include Antoine Fuqua, Rebecca Hobbs, Kat Samick, Andrea Calderwood, Jeffrey Soros, Simon Horsman, and Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet for 25 Stories. Exec producers are Blige, Luke Rodgers and Morgan Earnest for LAMF, Jeff Skoll and Robert Kessel for Participant, Jamin O’Brien, and Bruce Evans for 25 Stories.
