Mahershala Ali To Play Boxer Jack Johnson In ‘Unruly’ HBO Limited Series

Deadline is reporting that HBO is developing Unruly, a six-part limited series about boxing legend Jack Johnson to be played by two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali. The project hails from Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman’s Playtone and will be written by Dominique Morisseau based the PBS documentary Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, produced and directed by Ken Burns, and its companion book by Geoffrey C. Ward.

Unruly is described as an unapologetically Black, no-holds-barred telling of Jack Johnson (Ali), the world’s first Black Heavyweight Boxing Champion. This bold exploration depicts the champion’s rise to athletic greatness and the costs he paid for his skin and defiance, which created a blueprint for Black resistance in every justice movement for generations to come.

Ali is executive producing Unruly via his production company Know Wonder alongside his wife Amatus Karim Ali and their producing partner Mimi Valdés. Morisseau executive produces alongside Goetzman and Hanks via Playtone and Ken Burns via Florentine Films.

Beau Willimon will serve as co-executive producer alongside Playtone’s Steven Shareshian.

Nicknamed the “Galveston Giant”, Jackson became the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion (1908–1915) at the height of the Jim Crow era, with his 1910 fight against James J. Jeffries dubbed the “fight of the century.”