As if Matthew McConaughey’s plate wasn’t full enough with launching his own YouTube channel and contemplating a gubernatorial run, the actor is reportedly attached to star in a new series for HBO that will see him reprise his career-making role from A Time to Kill. In the 1996 film from director Joel Schumacher (based on the John Grisham novel of the same name), McConaughey played attorney Jake Brigance, who later appears in the follow-up novel A Time for Mercy, which will be the basis for the new series. Via Variety:
In “A Time to Kill,” Brigance defends a Black man (Samuel L. Jackson) who killed the two white men who savagely raped and murdered his daughter. In “A Time for Mercy,” Brigance must defend a young man who killed his mother’s boyfriend, a deputy sheriff, with the boy claiming the man was abusive towards his mother, himself, and his little sister.
Following Schumacher’s death in June 2020, McConaughey joined the chorus of tributes to the late director and credited him for starting his acting career, which McConaughey believes would’ve never taken off without his breakout role in A Time to Kill.
“Joel not only took a chance on me, he fought for me,” McConaughey told Variety. “Knowing the studio might never approve a relatively unknown like myself for the lead in ‘A Time to Kill,’ he set up a secret screen test for me on a Sunday morning in a small unknown studio because as he stated, ‘Even if you do great, you may not get the part, so I don’t want the industry to ever think you screen tested and DID NOT get the job.”
(Via Variety)