Oscar-winning Screenwriter from Milwaukee to Direct “The American Way”

by Staff, milwaukeeindependent.com

John Ridley, who won an Academy Award for writing “12 Years a Slave,” is adapting his “The American Way: Those Above And Those Below” comic series exploring racial issues through the superhero genre.

Ridley wrote the story with illustrator George Jeanty [as a] sequel to their 2007 graphic novel …[about] a team of 1960s superheroes called The Civil Defense Corps, each with special powers [and] specific ethnic makeup….

There is also a group of super-villains pitted against the heroes…. The movie will be focused in 1972 and pick up that original story a decade later. Ridley has said his inspiration for the series was…[President Lyndon Johnson’s] desire to add a black astronaut to the space program.

Jason Fisher is added to the superhero roster as “The New American,” a black man subjected to genetic manipulation to give him super strength but a limited pain threshold….

Ridley’s television work includes the ABC News documentary “Let It Fall” about the 1992 Los Angeles riots, also in theaters later this month; and ABC’s “American Crime,” on which he serves as showrunner and creator.

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