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The annals of film history have a lot of unmade, lost, and forgotten projects. A veteran filmmaker like Spike Lee, naturally has lots of them (we recounted 10 of them in 2013). One of those projects is an unmade boxing movie called “Save Us, Joe Louis,” about the friendship and rivalry between boxing heavyweight champion Joe Louis, and German heavyweight boxing champion Max Schmeling. Two of their fights are legendary in boxing history, and there’s even an intensely-detailed Wikipedia page dedicated to these fights and the surrounding dramas.

Continue reading Spike Lee Vows To Make ‘Save Us, Joe Louis’ Boxing Drama & Promised Screenwriter Budd Schulberg To Make It Before His Death at The Playlist.

The Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1938 arrives on Monday (and the voting is close) so get your votes in by Sunday morning! Before we get there it's time for more context of that year in history. The minimum wage was 40¢ an hour, the economy was in recession, and Howard Hughes was busy breaking aviation records. In sports Seabiscuit was the fastest horse, and Joe Louis was the Heavyweight champion of boxing. Meanwhile there was great unease in Europe with Hitler on the march and already claiming Austria and Czechoslovakia for Germany (the US turned a blind eye and European leaders were still trying to appease the madman).

Things were happy at the movies, though, where screwball comedies and adventure films were all the rage. If there's a link on a title, we've already written about the movie. Ready?  

When do you think "hung" changed its meaning in the popular vernacular?

Great...

Showtime is developing a limited series about entertainment icon and activist Lena Horne.

The series is currently titled “Blackbird: Lena Horne and America,” named for Horne’s favorite poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” Jenny Lumet, Horne’s granddaughter, will co-write the first few episodes of the series with Alex Kurtzman, with both also executive producing.

The series will span 60 years of Horne’s life, from dancing at the Cotton Club when she was 16, through World War II and stardom in the MGM years, McCarthyism, the civil rights movement, and her triumphant return to Broadway. It will also delve into her relationships with luminaries like Paul Robeson, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Joe Louis, Billie Holiday, Hattie McDaniel, Ava Gardner, and Orson Welles

“Bringing my grandmother’s story to the screen required a multi-generational effort,” said Lumet. “Grandma passed her stories to my mother, who now passes them to me,...

Showtime is developing a limited series about the life of entertainer and activist Lena Horne, with Horne’s granddaughter Jenny Lumet writing and executive producing.

Lumet will write the first few episodes with her longtime producing partner, Alex Kurtzman. The series will be produced by CBS TV Studios and Kurtzman’s Secret Hideout. Heather Kadin will serve as an executive producer as well.

“Bringing my grandmother’s story to the screen required a multi-generational effort,” said Lumet. “Grandma passed her stories to my mother, who now passes them to me, so I may pass them to the children of our family. Lena’s story is so intimate and at the same time, it’s the story of America – America at its most honest, most musical, most tragic and most joyous. It’s crucial now. Especially now. She was the love of my life.”

Also Read: CBS Fall Schedule: Chuck Lorre...

The life of entertainer and activist Lena Horne is to be turned into a limited series by Showtime with Alex Kurtzman and Horne’s granddaughter Jenny Lumet.

The ViacomCBS-backed cable network is developing Blackbird: Lena Horne and America and will tell her story from dancing at the Cotton Club when she was 16, through World War II and stardom of the MGM years, McCarthyism, the civil rights movement and her triumphant return to Broadway.

It will explore her relationships with Paul Robeson, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Joe Louis, Billie Holiday, Hattie McDaniel, Ava Gardner and Orson Welles and look at how she navigated stardom during Jim Crow as a direct descendant of slaves and their enslavers.

The series will be produced by CBS Television Studios and Secret Hideout and Heather Kadin, who worked with Kurtzman on Star Trek: Discovery, will also exec produce alongside Lumet, who wrote Rachel Getting Married...

This is awesome! The House of Representatives voted Unanimously on Thursday to award the Congressional Gold Medal to ex-Saints star Steve Gleason for all the great work he's doing to battle Als. Gleason (who played for the Saints from 2000 to 2006) was diagnosed with Als back in 2011. The disease affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. But, despite his physical challenges, Gleason has been a leading voice in raising awareness and money for Als organizations.

The great William Shatner has announced that he will be releasing a Christmas Album this year called Shatner Claus: The Christmas Album! Well, I know what I'll be listening to during the holiday season! Shatner will be joined by several other famous musicians who will lend their voices to his Christmas song covers. Some of those musical artists include Henry Rollins, Brad Paisley, Iggy Pop, Mel Collins, and Judy Collins. Here's the track list:

Jingle Bells Feat. Henry RollinsBlue Christmas Feat. Brad PaisleyLittle Drummer Boy Feat. Joe Louis WalkerWinter Wonderland Feat. Todd Rundgren & Artimus PyleTwas the Night Before Christmas Feat. Mel CollinsRun Rudolph Run Feat. Elliot EastonO Come, O Come Emmanuel Feat. Rick WakemanSilver Bells Feat. Ian AndersonOne for You, One for MeRudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Feat. Billy GibbonsSilent Night Feat. Iggy PopWhite Christmas Feat. Judy CollinsFeliz Navidad Feat. Dani Bender

The album will be available on CD and vinyl...

“Black Panther” filmmaker Ryan Coogler has made no bones about his affection for fellow director Spike Lee’s sprawling filmography, including using a post-screening Q&A of his own boundary-breaking Marvel film to heap praise on both Lee’s “Malcolm X” and “Do the Right Thing,” and now the Brooklyn mainstay is returning the favor. During an hour-long conversation at the Tribeca Film Festival on Tuesday evening, Lee was asked by an audience member if he’d seen Coogler’s film and what he thought of it.

“I loved it! My brother, I’ve seen it four times,” Lee answered. (Lee just so happened to be in attendance at that same screening where Coogler named his most influential films, so we’ve long known he’d seen the film at least once.)

Lee continued, “I will say, I look at the world now differently, before ‘Black Panther’ and after ‘Black Panther.

Director Spike Lee is struggling to win financial backing for a planned movie about late soul legend James Brown, insisting there's simply not enough interest in the star's life for the film.

The outspoken filmmaker admits he has been trying to set plans into action for a biopic about the Godfather of Soul for some time - but has failed to get a studio to back his project.

He tells MTV.com, "I have a black-biopic, no-money trilogy: Jackie Robinson. Joe Louis and James Brown. Those are three films I have scripts for and am trying to get done but have been unsuccessful so far.

"They (studio bosses) don't think there's a market for it, they're not interested. Or they think it costs too much. So that's one of those reasons why studios don't make anything.

Broadway veteran Robert Earl Jones has died at the age of 96. The actor, whose son James Earl Jones found fame voicing Darth Vader in the Star Wars movies, passed away at the Lillian Booth Actors' Home in New Jersey earlier this month. Jones starred as boxing champion Joe Louis in Spirit Of Youth among other films and Broadway productions. However, his career was briefly interrupted in the 1950s when he was blacklisted for refusing to testify before the House Of Un-American Activities Committee. He later had roles in Odds Against Tomorrow, Wild River, The Sting and Witness, as well as a string of stage parts alongside his son. He is survived by James Earl Jones, another son Matthew Earl Jones and a grandson.

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PARK CITY--"The Fight" could well have been titled "The Life and Times of Joe Louis and Max Schmeling"-- and what times they were. The American black man Louis and the German hero Schmeling were heavyweight boxers who fought twice in the mid-thirties. It's a classic case of individual lives taking on greater meaning because of the history surrounding them. American Experience doc admirably animates the period within a traditional format that should play well on television and afterwards on homevideo.

Film was inspired by a forthcoming book by David Margolick who brought the project to writer/director Barak Goodman and producer John Maggio. Before the fight, doc sets up the parallel lives of Louis and Schmeling, and they couldn't be more different.

Louis was a quiet, guarded soul who grew up the son of an Alabama sharecropper. After the flamboyant championship of Jack Johnson, Louis was not embraced by white America, but he was beloved in the black community. Schmeling was an adaptable sort: once the darling of Weimar Germany he later became a favorite of Hitler's.

After Schmeling upset Louis in their first meeting in 1936 in Yankee Stadium, ninety thousand people turned out two years later for their return bout. By then the world had been polarized and Louis became the hope of the free world and Schmeling the embodiment of Nazi aggression.

It was a colorful era, and vintage footage of boxing promoters like "Yussel the Muscle" and "Uncle Mike" share screen time with contemporary interviews with well known boxing writers, historians and friends of Louis. Splendid newsreel footage, including the fateful fight in which Louis knocks out Schmeling in two minutes and four seconds of the first round, helps give the story immediacy and weight.

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PARK CITY--"The Fight" could well have been titled "The Life and Times of Joe Louis and Max Schmeling"-- and what times they were. The American black man Louis and the German hero Schmeling were heavyweight boxers who fought twice in the mid-thirties. It's a classic case of individual lives taking on greater meaning because of the history surrounding them. American Experience doc admirably animates the period within a traditional format that should play well on television and afterwards on homevideo.

Film was inspired by a forthcoming book by David Margolick who brought the project to writer/director Barak Goodman and producer John Maggio. Before the fight, doc sets up the parallel lives of Louis and Schmeling, and they couldn't be more different.

Louis was a quiet, guarded soul who grew up the son of an Alabama sharecropper. After the flamboyant championship of Jack Johnson, Louis was not embraced by white America, but he was beloved in the black community. Schmeling was an adaptable sort: once the darling of Weimar Germany he later became a favorite of Hitler's.

After Schmeling upset Louis in their first meeting in 1936 in Yankee Stadium, ninety thousand people turned out two years later for their return bout. By then the world had been polarized and Louis became the hope of the free world and Schmeling the embodiment of Nazi aggression.

It was a colorful era, and vintage footage of boxing promoters like "Yussel the Muscle" and "Uncle Mike" share screen time with contemporary interviews with well known boxing writers, historians and friends of Louis. Splendid newsreel footage, including the fateful fight in which Louis knocks out Schmeling in two minutes and four seconds of the first round, helps give the story immediacy and weight.