Jay Roach (Trumbo) will direct 67 Shots, based on the book 67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence by Howard Means, Deadline reported. Award-winning playwright Stephen Belber is writing the script for the film. Roach will produce with Tina Fey, Jeff Richmond and Eric Gurian from their Little Stranger banner, along with Michelle Graham from Everyman Pictures, and Rawat and Monica Levinson from ShivHans Pictures.
The project began with Gurian and composer Richmond, who is Fey's husband and attended Kent State. Deadline noted that "they brought the idea to Roach, who previously worked with Fey when he produced the 2015 comedy Sisters."
"It is a cautionary tale," Roach said. "Kent State was a big event for me, and I remember arguing with my dad about it when I was about 13. There was a prevailing movement in the country--they measured it with polls--where the vast majority of Americans blamed the students for what happened.... The tamer version of this now is the NFL protest, the hatred that comes out for any show of what some people consider lack of patriotism.... More people are marching in the streets now than maybe at any time since the 1970s, and it made me feel this was a story worth revisiting."