Deadline has revealed Ben Affleck will be getting back in the director’s chair for King Leopold’s Ghost, a historical drama about a trio of men who uncovered and exposed King Leopold of Belgium’s plunder of the African Congo and murder of its citizens in the late 1800s.
Affleck will produce through his Pearl Street Films company along with Martin Scorsese and Emma Koskoff Tillinger. The script will be written by Farhad Safinia (Apocalypto), which will be based on Adam Hochschild’s book King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa.
The reported synopsis for the film is:
“Set at a moment when European countries were racing to find ways to carve up the natural resources of Africa, Leopold became the world’s richest man with billions stashed in secret bank accounts by gaining private ownership of the Congo Free State, and inserted a mercenary army to cruelly plunder rubber and ivory. He forced the locals to harvest it. Those who refused were dismembered or worse, and the book estimates that as many as 8 million were killed in this ruthless pursuit.
This film is an account of the Congolese who defied Leopold II and fought back. Their heroic plight sparked a daring and unlikely alliance between a black American missionary, an English investigative journalist and an Irish spy that shone a light on the horrors and gave birth to the first human rights movement. Once photographs were made public, Leopold’s charade of spreading Christianity in the heart of darkness was exposed as a greedy ruse, and the king was assailed by the likes of Mark Twain, Booker T. Washington, Arthur Conan Doyle and Joseph Conrad, whose disgust with Leopold’s “civilizing mission” led to writing Heart of Darkness.”
Affleck has been interested in this project for several years through his own passion for the Congo. He founded the Eastern Congo Initiative, an advocacy and grant-making group that aims to improve economic and social development in the region. He is also set to direct and star in the World War II drama Ghost Army as well as directing a film about the McDonald’s Monopoly theft scandal with Matt Damon, but it is unclear which of the three he will direct first. He is currently co-starring with Ana de Armas (Knives Out) in the erotic thriller Deep Water from Adrian Lyne.
