Playwright Ronald Harwood to Pen Martin Luther King Jr. Biopic for DreamWorks

Playwright Ronald Harwood, author of such Broadway plays as The Dresser and Taking Sides, has been tapped to write a Martin Luther King Jr. film to begin production once finished, according to the indiatimes.com. DreamWorks Studios will produce the film alongside acclaimed director Steven Speilberg.

Says Mark Sourian and Holly Bario from DreamWorks, "It is so gratifying for all of us at DreamWorks Studios to have a writer as respected and honored as Ronald Harwood to write the screenplay for our Martin Luther King film...His record of achievements makes him particularly suited to portraying this deeply personal story against the background of such a turbulent time."

To read the full report in the indiatimes.com, click here.

Ronald Harwood is most noted for his plays for the British stage as well as the screenplays for The Dresser, for which he was nominated for an Oscar, and The Pianist, for which he won the 2003 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007).

After training for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he joined the Shakespeare Company of Sir Donald Wolfit. From 1953 to 1958, Harwood was Sir Donald's personal dresser. He would later draw on this experience when he wrote the stage play, The Dresser, and the biography: Sir Donald Wolfit CBE: His life and work in the Unfashionable Theatre. In 1959, after leaving the Wolfit company. he joined the 59 Theatre Company for a season at the Lyric Hammersmith. One of the recurring themes in Harwood's work is his fascination for the stage, its performing artists and artisans as displayed in the The Dresser, his plays, After the Lions (about Sarah Bernhardt), Another Time (a semi-autobiographical piece about a gifted South African pianist), Quartet (about ageing opera singers) and his non-fiction book All the World's a Stage, a general history of theatre.

 

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