Lucas Till and Lucy Hale have bagged lead roles in Spike Lee executive-produced drama Son of the South.
The 28-year-old X-Men: Apocalypse actor will star as Bob Zellner in the movie, based on Zellner's 2008 autobiography The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement, according to Variety.
The movie will tell the story of how Zellner, an Alabama native and grandson of a member of secret society Ku Klux Klan, joined ranks with African-American students fighting for their civil rights in 60s segregated America.
Former Pretty Little Liars star Hale will appear alongside Till as Carol Ann, Zellner's college girlfriend, in the movie which is currently shooting in Montgomery, Alabama.
Lee, who won the 2019 Academy Award for the BlacKkKlansman adapted screenplay, is executive producing with his longtime editor, Barry Alexander Brown, who received an editing nomination for the 2018 movie - directing from his own screenplay which he wrote almost decade ago.
Brown first crossed paths with Zellner in 1968 when, as a student at Montgomery’s Lanier High School, he contacted Zellner, by then a well-known figure in the civil rights movement, about his high school not being allowed to lower their flag to half-mast following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.
“He had so many stories, and every one of the stories was jaw-dropping, so I knew there was a movie there,” Brown told website Yellowhammernews.com. “I just didn’t know what the movie was. Then it hit me to do it about his transition about being somebody about to graduate from Huntingdon College – sort of a good ol’ boy – and in a matter of a few months, he was in the centre of the civil rights movement.”
Cast members include Lex Scott Davis, Julia Ormond as Virginia Durr, Cedric the Entertainer as Reverend Ralph Abernathy and Sharonne Lanier as Rosa Parks. While Brian Dennehy stars as Zellner's Ku Klux Klan member grandfather and Chaka Forman will portray the role of his activist father Jim Forman.
Producers on the project are Colin Bates, Eve Pomerance, Bill Black, Stan Erdreich, and River Bend Pictures.
