Spike Lee’s Next Movie Will Be a Vietnam Veteran Drama Starring Chadwick Boseman

Director Spike Lee’s next movie, Da 5 Bloods, will star Black Panther’s Chadwick Boseman, Variety reports. Lee is also in negotiations with Delroy Lindo and Jean Reno to join the cast of the movie, an ensemble drama about Vietnam veterans.

This will be the first time Boseman or Reno work with Lee (although the director did receive a “special thanks” credit in a 2004 short Boseman appeared in), but Lindo is a Spike Lee veteran, having appeared in Malcolm X, Crooklyn, and Clockers. Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo, the writing team behind The Rocketeer, wrote the original screenplay Da 5 Bloods is based on. Matthew Billingsly rewrote that script, and now Lee and Kevin Wilmott, the director’s co-writer on Chi-Raq and BlacKkKlansman, are rewriting it again. Production could start in March, as soon as Lee’s BlacKkKlansman awards campaign wraps up.

Speaking of awards campaigns, they seem to have played a role in the development process here: Netflix made a big offer for the distribution rights once the Oscar nominations for BlacKkKlansman—including a long-overdue Best Director nod for Lee—were announced at the end of January. There will may come a day when Netflix can no longer spend all the money in the world to fund new work from A-list directors like Lee (or Cuarón, or the Coen brothers, or Scorsese), but as long as they do, it looks like their largesse is going to bring us some interesting movies. Here’s hoping Lee’s movie makes it to theaters!