Stallone To Make Movie On Jack Johnson

Hot on the heels of Johnson's pardon,which Stallone had been lobbying for,Stallone has announced he is to make a movie on Jack Johnson.
Lets hope it is a good one!

The timing of the launch, coming as it does hot on the heels of a posthumous presidential pardon, smacks of opportunism…

Stallone’s production company, Balboa Productions, will be the brains behind the project. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures will provide the brawn…
In the right hands a Johnson biopic might be worth remembering. In the wrong hands it will be a cliché.

The posthumous pardon of Jack Johnson was long overdue. Innocent of some charges and guilty of others, Johnson was railroaded in this instance and did time for a crime designated for people like him. He had it coming, in a manner of speaking, the pardon that is, and President Trump, at the urging of his pal Sylvester Stallone (aka Rocky), turned the tables on his detractors and gave the long-dead Johnson his freedom at last.

Even the most heartless cynics (i.e., crestfallen idealists) were gratified, if only for a moment, to see a legal wrong righted. But it may take some time, pardon or no pardon, to get accustomed to a sanitized Jack Johnson.

Stallone, a man who embodies boxing in the minds of many, is the ghost in the machine. He is a big-picture guy, forward-thinking to some, irredeemably lowbrow to others, and he has seized the moment, waiting less than a week after the Oval Office ceremony to announce that a Jack Johnson biopic with his imprimatur is in the works.

Stallone’s production company, Balboa Productions, will be the brains behind the project. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures will provide the brawn.

With the “Rocky” franchise alive and well and as iconic as ever, Stallone is on a roll. “Creed,” his most recent “Rocky” film, was a smash. “Creed II,” the inevitable sequel, will hit movie theaters in November.
In the right hands a Johnson biopic might be worth remembering. In the wrong hands it will be a cliché. But the timing of the launch, coming as it does hot on the heels of a posthumous presidential pardon, smacks of opportunism. That of course is not a crime. The crime will be if Stallone’s film fails to do Jack Johnson justice.

 

I enjoyed The Great White Hope,I thought James Earl Jones captured Johnson rather well.