Anthony Mackie and Sarah Paulson join stacked cast of Clybourne Park film adaptation

Uzo Aduba and Martin Freeman will also star in the feature based on Bruce Norris' Pulitzer, Tony, and Olivier award-winning play

By Savannah Olson  |  May 11, 2022 | 8:47pm
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Anthony Mackie and Sarah Paulson join stacked cast of Clybourne Park film adaptation
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Anthony Mackie, Sarah Paulson Photo: Jason Kempin

The film adaptation of Bruce Norris’ acclaimed play Clybourne Park has found its stars. Sarah Paulson, Anthony Mackie, Uzo Aduba, and Martin Freeman are all set to star in the feature focused on race and real estate during two different time periods in Chicago’s Northwest community. Nick Robinson (Maid) and Hillary Baack (Sound Of Metal) have also signed onto the film.

According to Deadline, at the center of Norris’ play is “Clybourne Park, a sleepy, ‘status quo’ suburb of Chicago, which is sparked to life when a group of ‘well-meaning’ neighbors convene a meeting to voice their concerns—dripping with politeness, apparent tolerance and searching innuendo. A blistering debate over property lines and community devolves into all-out war.”

Set up as a spin-off of sorts to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin In The Sun, the play switches between mirrored events in the same Chicago area during 1959 and 50 years after in 2009.

Clybourne Park will be directed by Tony award winner Pam MacKinnon, who will be making her feature debut. MacKinnon launched Clybourne Park on Broadway; the play went on to win a 2012 Tony Award for Best Play and she received a nomination for Best Direction.

Producers for the project are Simon Friend (The Father) and Kevin Loader (The Death Of Stalin), who have had previous experience in stage-to-screen adaptations. Friend’s The Father won two Oscars at the 2020 Academy Awards, while Loader’s adaptations of The Lady In The Van and The History Boys both received BAFTA nominations.

“Ten years after Broadway and the Pulitzer Prize, Clybourne Park is even more relevant as an investigation of white liberal fragility and hopes deferred,” MacKinnon says in a statement to Deadline. “I am thrilled by the thought of this stellar acting company, storming this house and neighbourhood, building two worlds: a laugh-out-loud comedy of bad manners set in 2009 and heartrending family tragedy of 1959.”

Clybourne Park is set to begin filming during the fall in the UK and the US.

 
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