Jeremy Pope To Play Sammy Davis Jr. in Janet Mock Directed Film ‘Scandalous!’ About His Affair With Kim Novak

Deadline is reporting that recent Emmy nominee Jeremy Pope (Hollywood) has been cast to play Sammy Davis Jr. in Scandalous! with  Janet Mock (Hollywood and Pose) directing the drama about the interracial love affair between the entertainer and actress Kim Novak, who at the time was the top box office draw in Hollywood.

Pic will be produced by Jonathan Glickman, who is producing the upcoming Aretha Franklin film Respect, and Jon Levin. Glickman has an MGM deal and Mock one at Netflix, but they are shopping this one wide and the plan is to shoot this fall in Los Angeles and set it up with a distributor as they are locking an actress to play Novak. Mock, who is writer, director and EP on both Hollywood and Pose, will polish the script by Matthew Fantaci.

Davis was the color barrier-breaking star who was making $25,000 a week at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas and became one of the first black stars to appear in a dramatic role on television on General Electric Theater. Novak was a discovery of notorious Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn, who relied on her to replace previous discovery Rita Hayworth, whose string of marriages dimmed her starpower. Novak was the next rising star of Vertigo, and when she and Davis fell in love after being matched up by Tony Curtis, the pressures brought to bear on both were unimaginable as word of their romance hit the Hollywood gossips.

Tani Cohen, Bobby Rock, Molly Mankiewicz are exec producers and Carmen Cuba is casting the film.