David Gyasi (The Diplomat) will star in The Bard, a film about George Moses Horton, "the first Black poet to be published in America while enslaved, a feat punishable by death," Variety reported. Horton wrote love poems and anti-slavery protests, and "was assisted by the white wife of a University of North Carolina Chapel Hill professor, who eventually became an anti-abolitionist."
The project will be directed by Kevin Willmott, who won an Oscar for co-writing BlacKkKlansman with Spike Lee, and also wrote and directed The 24th. Willmott is working from a script he wrote with E. Paul Edwards. The Bard, which is currently shooting in North Carolina, is being produced by Kim Zubick, Lauren Vilchik, Roland Waddell, Paul Edwards, and Ksana Golod. Executive producers are Frigate Filmworks and Chase McNaughton, with Bernice Miller an associate producer.
"This film is also at its heart a love story, in which two people are afforded a rare glimpse into what their lives might be like if they were released from the social norms of the time," said the producers. "Lastly, it provokes us to examine how far we would go to reject social injustice when our own position is in peril."