Deadline reports Oscar-winner Morgan Freeman (Lean On Me, Solos) and Lori McCreary’s (Madam Secretary, The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain) Revelations Entertainment will produce new South Africa-based drama series, Hanover Street. The series will star Lesley-Ann Brandt (Lucifer, Spartacus) who is attached to produce along with Adrian Cunninghan’s (Bedtime Story, Toast) D6 Entertainment.
According to Deadline, the series will capture the fact-based tale of Cape Town’s District Six, a community of about 60,000 residents who lived during the plight of South Africa’s apartheid era. In 1966, the town with citizens from all ethnicities and a strong LGBTQA+ presence was designated as a whites-only area. Sixteen years later the racist regime had forcibly removed all inhabitants and destroyed the town.
“We are thrilled to have partnered with Lori, Morgan, and the team at Revelations to bring the beauty and tragedy of District Six to life,” Brandt stated according to Deadline. “It’s such personal story to me, my family, and the people of the Cape Flats. While the barbarity of the apartheid regime has featured onscreen before, Hanover Street will lean into the joy and solidarity that the community shared in the face of repression,” Brandt finished via Deadline.
According to Deadline, this isn’t the first project set in South Africa that Revelations has produced. Danny Glover (The Color Purple, The Last Black Man in San Francisco) starred in Bopha!, Freeman’s 1993 directorial debut centering on a Black South African police officer’s moral dilemma between country and family.
“There’s a definite correlation between the racial reconciliation that has gone about in South Africa — and continues today — and the important conversations happening today in America,” McCreary said according to Deadline.
Morgan also starred in Invictus, in which he scored an Oscar nomination as Nelson Mandela, via Deadline. Clint Eastwood’s 2009 film explored South Africa following the end of apartheid as Mandela was released from prison and elected president. Through the game of rugby, Morgan’s Mandela sought to unify a country still healing from its sore wounds.
“Bopha! explores police violence and Invictus, racial reconciliation,” McCreary continued via Deadline. “We find it sometimes easier to reflect on stories in another country to learn more about ourselves.”
Still early in development, no network or streamer is said to be attached to the series.