Interstellar star Matthew McConaughey is to collaborate with Hunger Games director Gary Ross on Free State of Jones, an American civil war-set drama about legendary rebel Newton Knight, according to Deadline.
Knight, who was born in Mississippi in 1837, was the leader of an outlaw band of Confederate army deserters who turned against the south’s secessionist struggle and attempted to set up the “Free State of Jones” in Jones County, Mississippi. Knight’s anti-slavery credentials were further established by his marriage to a former slave during the post-civil war reconstruction period. Knight’s story has been told before on film, in the 1948 drama Tap Roots starring Van Heflin and Susan Hayward.
Deadline report that the project, a long-term ambition of Ross’s, is set to start shooting early next year, and has a sizeable $65m (£40m) budget. McConaughey, who won the best actor Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club in 2014 and will shortly be seen in the Gus Van Sant-directed The Sea of Trees, will make Knight his next role in a recent career surge that has seen his reputation and status transformed.
