STREAM EXCLUSIVE ORIGINALS

What Do Jamie Foxx, The Black Panthers And O.J. Simpson Have In Common?

The Academy Award-winner’s new project reveals all.

Jamie Foxx has officially been cast as Black Panther Party leader Elmer ‘Geronimo’ Pratt in the forthcoming Johnnie Cochran biopic Signal Hill.

Starring Anthony Mackie, Signal Hill will detail the acclaimed attorney’s plight to have the 1981 wrongful death case of college football star Ron Settles overturned. Per Variety, police officials initially ruled that Settles committed suicide, but with an autopsy requested by the Settles family at the request of Johnnie Cochran proved that he’d been choked to death. The Settles family ultimately went on to be awarded a $1 million civil suit against the Southern Californian city of Signal Hill.

Foxx’s character ‘Geronimo’ served 27 years in prison for a 1968 murder that he did not commit. Cochran successfully represented Pratt, who subsequently had his sentence vacated and was awarded a $4.5 million false imprisonment suit in 1998.

Signal Hill will also reunite Jamie Foxx with Ray director Taylor Hackford. The duo landed Academy Award nominations for their roles in the Ray Charles biopic. Jamie Foxx, won best actor while Hackford received two nods for best picture and best director.

Best known for his role in defending O.J. Simpson in the 1995 murder trial of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman, Johnnie Cochran passed away from an inoperable brain tumor in 2005.

See the latest on Simpson's release from prison with BET Breaks, above.

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