Bar­ry Jenk­ins to direct biopic of chore­o­g­ra­ph­er and activist Alvin Ailey

Under the new man­age­ment of the Dis­ney empire, bou­tique pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion out­fit Fox Search­light Pic­tures has con­tin­ued chug­ging right along. Today brings the news of a major coup for the art­house arm of the Fox sub-stu­dio, one of the first major deals since their acqui­si­tion by the Mouse House.

Dead­line reports that Bar­ry Jenk­ins will direct a film chron­i­cling the life and times of cel­e­brat­ed chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, dancer, and activist Alvin Ailey. It’s cur­rent­ly unclear where on Jenk­ins’ to-do list this falls rel­a­tive to the Under­ground Rail­road series he’s doing for Ama­zon, but this Ailey pic­ture could be Jenk­ins’ prop­er fea­ture fol­low-up to the recent If Beale Street Could Talk.

Ailey broke bar­ri­ers for African-Amer­i­can per­form­ers in the field of pro­fes­sion­al dance, and found­ed both New York’s Ailey School as well as the tour­ing com­pa­ny Alvin Ailey Amer­i­can Dance The­ater. He’s one of the most sig­nif­i­cant names in the dis­ci­pline of mod­ern dance, with an incal­cu­la­ble lega­cy on the art form that extend­ed past his untime­ly death due to AIDS.

In a turn atyp­i­cal of Jenk­ins’ work, he will not pen the script for his own direc­to­r­i­al effort, leav­ing the screen­writ­ing duties to Julian Breece, one of the writ­ers on Ava DuVer­nay​‘s Net­flix series When They See Us. The direc­tor has writ­ten his own scripts for each project up until now, though Breece will work from Jen­nifer Dunning’s defin­i­tive biog­ra­phy on Ailey.

No date has been set for release, and of course the most intrigu­ing ques­tion mark con­cerns which actor would have the com­bi­na­tion of actor­ly chops and near-super­hu­man phys­i­cal com­mand to inhab­it such a role. Our two cents — it’s just the sort of star-mak­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to break in an undis­cov­ered young tal­ent wait­ing for their moment.