A Biopic On Black Panther Party Co-Founder Huey Newton Is In The Works

Source: Biography.com

A biopic on Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton has been greenlit.

Retired basketball player Matt Barnes took to Instagram to announce the project Monday, writing: "Just got the Huey Newton The Leader Of The Black Panthers-bio pic GreenLit! POWER TO THE PEOPLE will be the name of the film! Stay tuned!!"

READ: A Film On Black Panther Party Leader Elaine Brown Is In The Works

In the caption Barnes also included actor and model Keith Powers, seeming to hint that The New Edition Story star would be portraying Newton. No other information is known about the forthcoming biopic.

Late last year came the announcement that Elaine Brown, the first and only woman to ever lead the Black Panther Party, is getting her own biopic based on her 1992 memoir A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story.

The adaptation will be produced by Robbie Brenner (Dallas Buyers Club) with The Firm's Jeff Kwatinetz and Kevin McKeon. A writer has not been attached to the project yet.

"Elaine is a true revolutionary. We are so thrilled to work with such an extraordinary woman and, after getting to know Elaine personally, I am deeply humbled to have the opportunity to bring her inspirational story to the big screen," Brenner said.

Brown led the party from 1974 to 1977 while co-founder Huey Newton was in exile in Cuba, and wrote about the challenges she faced leading the Black Panther Party in her memoir.

"A woman in the Black Power movement was considered, at best, irrelevant. A woman asserting herself was a pariah," she wrote. "If a black woman assumed a role of leadership, she was said to be eroding black manhood, to be hindering the progress of the black race. She was an enemy of the black people…I knew I had to muster something mighty to manage the Black Panther Party."