Just Mercy, Michael B Jordan, Jamie Foxx, and Brie Larson's courtroom drama, to release in India on 17 January

Michael B Jordan, Jamie Foxx, and Brie Larson-starrer courtroom drama Just Mercy is slated to release in India on 17 January, 2020.

The movie had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 6 September, and was praised for being a "straightforward and potent drama about racism and justice." However, the runtime, clocking in at 136 minutes, was criticised by many.

A still from Just Mercy trailer. Twitter

Just Mercy is based on the case of Walter McMillan, an African-American death-row prisoner who was exonerated in 1993 after being convicted for a 1986 murder in Alabama. Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, took on McMillan's case in 1988, which was his first case as an attorney.

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Foxx's turn as McMillan recently earned him a nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role at the 2020 Screen Actors Guild Awards. He is nominated alongside Tom Hanks for his role in  A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. 

In an interview to Deadline, Foxx recounted what it was like to play a real-life character. "Getting into this character was so powerful… Just trying to dial in the Walter McMillian character—talking to Bryan Stevenson, since Walter was no longer with us—and finding out who he was. If you get a chance to see the movie, you’ll see that the one encouraging thing about taking on this character is that Walter and I aesthetically look similar. We had the same cheekbones, the same sort of diamond-shaped head. I even had that haircut in the ’80s that you see, the flattop. So, after having that, at least, close proximity to the character, then it was just a case of building what Walter was.”

The cast also includes Tim Blake Nelson, Rafe Spall, Rob Morgan, and O'Shea Jackson Jr. Destin Daniel Cretton directed the upcoming drama from his adaptation of Stevenson's 2014 best-selling book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, which won a number of awards.