Arthur Ashe Biopic Movie Announced From Academy Award Winning Writer Kevin Wilmott, Hyde Park Entertainment
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Arthur Ashe was a legendary athlete and civil rights activist and his life story is going to be given the movie treatment.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Kevin Willmott, the co-writer of Spike Lee's movie BlacKkKlansman, has teamed up with Hyde Park Entertainment and Warner Music Group to create a biopic about the only black tennis player to win the men's single title at the US Open, Wimbledon and the Australian Open.
Ashok Amritraj, who is the CEO of Hyde Park Entertainment, was a tennis professional himself and his brother Vijay was a a quarter finalist at Wimbeldon.
"Arthur's legacy reaches far beyond his greatness as a tennis player," said Amritraj in a statement. "Always a gentleman; bold, graceful, and intellectual, while at the same time passionate in his fight against racial inequality and injustice."
Ashe famously won the 1968 US Open and was a civil rights activist throughout his tennis career and life. The tennis player contracted HIV during the 1980s from a blood transfusion related to heart surgery and died at the age of 49 at New York Hospital in 1993 from AIDS-related pneumonia.
There is no date attached to the release of the biopic and Ashe's late wife Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe will be an executive producer on the project.