Spike Lee has bought the rights to Brendan Koerner’s 2008 nonfiction book Now the Hell Will Start, a manhunt thriller set in World War II, Variety reports. The filmmaker, whose most recent release was the World War II-set Miracle at St. Anna, is set to produce the project, which uses the true story of an African-American soldier who killed his superior and then escaped into the jungles of Burma as a prism through which to examine the treatment of black troops during the Second World War.
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This is going to be hilarious. Knowing Spike, the American, German, British, and Italian soldiers will all be played by black guys. Clint Eastwood, you’re going down!
It would be fitting, given the all-white depictions of the war in almost all other pictures. I don’t agree with Spike’s militantism, but he does have a point. African American soldiers fought, dies, and won as valiantly as any of their white counterparts, except upon their return home they were treated as second-class citizens instead of the combat heros they were. History tries to sweep them under the rug as they refuted pre-existing notion of what AA’s were at the time. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Hollywood has followed suit up to the present. It’s a shame. Those vets deserved better from history and their country. And a little respect from the moving pictures would be nice.