Anthony Mackie to play young Johnnie Cochran in Signal Hill drama

Dame Helen Mirren’s filmmaker husband Taylor Hackford has signed on to tackle a new film about top lawyer Johnnie Cochran, starring Anthony Mackie.
The Ray director will take charge of Signal Hill, which will focus on Cochran’s pursuit of justice in the Signal Hill police brutality case in 1981, over a decade before the late lawyer became O.J. Simpson’s attorney.
The film will be adapted from David McMillan’s script, and both Hackford and Mackie are among the producers.
Cochran became a force to be reckoned with in the California justice system after he became an advocate for African-American victims of police brutality by representing football player Ron Settles, who was found hanging in his cell after police picked him up for speeding in Signal Hill, Los Angeles.
Cops ruled his death a suicide but an autopsy showed he had been choked to death.
Settles’ family, who Cochran convinced to exhume the body for the autopsy, was awarded $760,000 (GBP562,000).
Cochran died in 2005.