Aaron Sorkin read­ies his Chica­go 7 movie with a star­ry cast

Aaron Sorkin is return­ing to his home court, which is to say, the court­room. The scribe-turned-direc­tor is nev­er bet­ter than when allow­ing a pair of extreme­ly intel­li­gent char­ac­ters to argue one anoth­er into sub­mis­sion in an open pro­ceed­ing or closed-door depo­si­tion, and it sounds like his lat­est project will have plen­ty of both.

Dead­line reports this morn­ing that Sorkin’s next for­ay into direct­ing will be The Tri­al of the Chica­go 7, and that he’s staffed up with a murderer’s row of name-brand actors. In clas­si­cal­ly Sorki­nesque fash­ion, the chap­ter of his­to­ry sam­pled for this film involves lots and lots of heat­ed dia­logue deliv­ered in a legal set­ting. He’ll feel right at home.

The film cov­ers a 1969 scan­dal in which a line­up of sev­en coun­ter­cul­tur­al pro­test­ers respon­si­ble for unrest at the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion one year ear­li­er were charged with con­spir­a­cy by the US gov­ern­ment. They were self-styled rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, real­ly just par­tic­u­lar­ly vocal hip­pies, but the attempt­ed scape­goat­ing made them into key fig­ures in the fight for the right to orga­nize and oppose the sta­tus quo.

Deadline’s item men­tions that Michael Keaton, William Hurt, and JC Macken­zie have all joined the cast as mem­bers of the pros­e­cu­tion speak­ing out against the Chica­go 7. They’re just the lat­est addi­tions to a deep bench that already includes Eddie Red­mayne, Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Rylance (odd pre­pon­der­ance of Brits for a film about dis­cord in the States), Jere­my Strong, Joseph Gor­don-Levitt, Frank Lan­gel­la, and recent break­out Kelvin Har­ri­son Jr.

As Amer­i­cans con­tin­ue to squab­ble over the prop­er form resis­tance ought to take, the sub­text of Sorkin’s lat­est cho­sen sub­ject ris­es to the sur­face, illus­trat­ing the tan­ta­mount impor­tance of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence at a time when many pun­dits have placed an undue empha­sis on cour­te­ous­ness over right­eous­ness. At the very least, it should ignite about a week’s worth of spir­it­ed dis­putes on when the peace needs to be disturbed.

The Tri­al of the Chica­go 7 will come to the­aters in the US on 25 Sep­tem­ber, 2020.