By George Alexander

When I heard the recent news that DreamWorks had acquired the rights to produce a film for the big screen on the life of Martin Luther King Jr.-albeit with much controversy among the King children-I was excited. In times like these, we all need an ongoing wakeup call that all is still not right in the world. Injustice and unfairness still exist and we all have a role to play in eradicating it.

The good thing is that the King biopic has some serious names behind it, as in Hollywood powerhouse Steven Spielberg, who is slated to produce the film, along with Suzanne de Passe and Madison Jones. De Passe, who wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay for Lady Sings the Blues, and produced the Emmy award-winning mini-series Lonesome Dove, is joined by Madison Jones, an architect of licensing King’s images and words for over two decades who also earned an Emmy nomination as a producer on the 1999 animated film My Friend, Martin.

Ironically, the announcement of the King film comes in an era some people foolishly define as post-racial, as in: Now that we have a black president everything’s cool. So what’s your problem now? Why do you have to keep talking about civil rights? The argument is that we’ve transcended racial prejudice in our country, that the most heinous forms of racial discrimination have all but been eliminated. Let’s celebrate. It’s time to move on.

Okay, hold on a minute. That argument is way too naïve. All you have to do is look at the Labor Department reports in May that black unemployment hit 15% (compared to the national rate of 9.4%), with some economists saying that it could be as high as 27%; the escalating HIV rate in the black community; black incarceration rates; the disproportionate impact of the subprime debacle on African Americans; persistent police brutality in some urban centers; and the shooting by a white supremacist in the Holocaust Museum, to see that much of Dr. King’s dream is still unfulfilled.

What makes a King film so poignant is that movies are powerful. They have an inherent ability to shape our thoughts and dreams, and how we see the world. My thought is that putting Dr. King’s brilliant teachings into the pop culture landscape will undoubtedly present him once again to many of us who, while perhaps having heard King’s speeches in the past, have allowed his lessons on equality to go dormant in our minds.

The upcoming King film has the potential to force us to reexamine his ideas and positions not only in an historical context but to also see their relevance today and for the future of an ever changing and more complex world. For younger audiences, a King biopic also has the ability to introduce King to a generation of people for whom he is merely a guy who allows us a January holiday ski weekend.

But there are challenges. Period pieces, in general, can be tough when to comes to raking in money at the box office. Black period pieces dealing with historical figures and issues face even greater hurdles.

Take, for example, The Great Debaters (2007) produced by Oprah Winfrey and directed by and starring Denzel Washington. That film was excellent. I loved it. Great story. Great cast. Great PR machine behind it. Still, it earned a mere $30 million in domestic revenues.  Malcolm X (1992), which also starred Washington, made only $48 million in spite of its hype. And let’s not forget Winfrey’s highly touted Beloved (1998), which absolutely tanked bringing in only $22.9 million in the U.S.

But there have been some winners, too, like American Gangster (2007), which took in $130 million in the U.S., Dreamgirls (2006), which made $103 million domestically and  Ray (2004), which earned $75 million domestically.  They were all period pieces, yes, but I wouldn’t put them in the historical drama category. American Gangster was a glossy, shoot ‘em-up-on-the-streets hood flick with Washington at his best. The other two were music-driven and pop culture in scope. Not exactly an apples and oranges comparison with King.

The question for the MLK biopic is will audiences-particularly the young and fickle who flock to theaters on opening weekend-want to see a film about a civil rights leader? Conversely, will mature audiences, who feel they already know King’s story, be willing to pay to go see it at the multiplex? I sure pray so, but we’ll have to see.

For starters, because Hollywood is big business, the producers will have to come correct. The casting must be superb. In the role of King, they need a star. Not a fine actor. A star! That means someone with box office power: Jamie Foxx, Will Smith or Denzel Washington, is what I’m talking about.

Washington is probably too old, so that leaves us with Smith and Foxx. My vote would go to Foxx. He simply crushed Ray on the way to his Oscar win, demonstrating an ability to create a real, live human being on screen and not fall into caricature. Smith, too, certainly has the box office mojo and he’s definitely a great actor, but I’m not sure I see him as MLK. And I’m not sure audiences will buy him in that role either. That’s just my gut. But I wouldn’t count him out. Smith has power and power talks in Tinseltown.

On the directing front, I’d like to see someone like Washington; Soul Food and Men of Honor director George Tillman Jr.; Eve’s Bayou and Talk to Me director Kasi Lemmons; Waiting to Exhale director Forest Whitaker; or Devil in a Blue Dress’s Carl Franklin tackle this material. The piece needs a sensitive, consciousness-raising approach. This is more than a movie. This is African-American history. This is American history. This is world history. This has the potential of being an epic masterpiece.

If done well-and I hope the film will be exceptional-we as citizens of the world should be moved to act. To act on injustice. To act on racial prejudice. To act on discrimination of any kind. We must cease to see King as some super-human of the past who possessed superpowers which allowed him to lead one of the most transformative movements humankind has ever seen.

No, no, no, we must instead see King as a real human being-brilliant, kind and strong yet at times fearful, flawed, and pained. This type of portrayal will not only help us to better understand him, but to better understand ourselves and the roles we can play-imperfections and all-in helping to improve society.

I recently saw playwright Tracey Scott Wilson’s critically acclaimed play The Good Negro at the Public Theater in New York. In this play, Wilson takes a viscerally seductive, behind-the-scenes look at the civil rights movement through fictionalized leaders. In Wilson’s treatment, the King character, called James Lawrence, is not without human frailty. He is real. With real human blood. Real human emotions and contradictions. It’s an excellent work.

Lucky for me, the performance of The Good Negro that I attended was followed by a talk back with Dr. Michael Eric Dyson and cast members. And what came of the discussion was the conclusion that flawed human beings are quite capable of extraordinary achievements. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. King had flaws. King was extraordinary. Obama admitted his past missteps in a book. Obama is extraordinary.

I highly recommend that the filmmakers see The Good Negro as a study in how they perhaps might delicately humanize Dr. King while simultaneously not sacrificing his profound achievements. With the right director at the helm-one who understands the weight, depth, and sensitivity of this project-such an approach, while challenging, will perhaps allow others to step forth in a struggle that, in spite of White House glory, continues in our midst.

Let’s hope they get it right.

George Alexander is the author of Why We Make Movies and Queens: Portraits of Black Women and Their Fabulous Hair. He also wrote the VH1 series Black in the 80s.