Anthony Mackie joins Katherine Bigelow's Detroit riots film

Bang Showbiz

5 August 2016

Anthony Mackie with team up once again with The Hurt Locker's Katherine Bigelow for her new movie about the 1967 Detroit riots

Anthony Mackie is reuniting with director Katherine Bigelow for her film about the 1967 Detroit riots.

The project will mark the first time Mackie and Bigelow have worked together since 2007's multiple award-winning Iraq war movie 'The Hurt Locker'.

According to Deadline, the 37-year-old actor will play a returning Vietnam War veteran in the as yet untitled drama.

The Detroit riots took place over five days in the summer of 1967 during which 43 died, 1,189 were injured, there were over 7,200 arrests, and more than 2,000 buildings were damaged.

The disturbances erupted as a result of rage at apparent institutionalised racism following a police raid of an unlicensed, after-hours bar, then known as a 'blind pig'.

Production is underway, with principle photography having begun in Boston, and 64-year-old director Bigelow is aiming for a 2017 release date to tie in with the 50th anniversary of the riots.

Mackie joins a cast that also includes Macbeth's Jack Reynor, 24, 'The Revenant' star Will Poulter, 23, 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' actor John Boyega, 24, and 'Game of Thrones' actress Hannah Murray, 27.

Mackie is set to film the Bigelow flick before he starts work on the two new 'Avengers' films in which he will reprise his role of Falcon.

The 'Love the Coopers' star is also signed up to play Johnnie Cochran in a film that follows his pursuit of justice following the Signal Hill police brutality case in 1981.

Cochran is probably most famous for leading the acquittal case for O.J. Simpson, but it was the Signal Hill case that secured his reputation as a lawyer that fought for black peoples' civil liberties.

The lawyer, who died in 2005, represented a football player Ron Settles, who was arrested for speeding in Signal Hill, in Los Angeles. After his arrest, he was found hanged in his cell. The police called it a suicide, but an autopsy showed that he had been choked to death.

The family was awarded $760,000 in a civil suit, the police chief resigned, and reforms took place.