Warner Bros. releases powerful trailer for Michael B Jordan, Jamie Foxx film 'Just Mercy'
Warner Bros. has released a new trailer for “Just Mercy,” the powerful Michael B. Jordan film highlighting the themes of redemption, mercy and hope.
In the forthcoming biographical drama, Jordan stars as lawyer and social justice activist Bryan Stevenson. A Harvard Law School graduate, Stevenson takes his talents to Alabama to fight for those who were condemned for crimes they didn't commit.
The film is based on Stevenson’s 2014 bookJust Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Jamie Foxx, Brie Larson, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Rob Morgan and Tim Blake Nelson also star in the forthcoming legal drama.
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A powerful and thought-provoking true story, “Just Mercy” follows Bryan's defense of Walter McMillian (Foxx) after he's sentenced to "death by electrocution" for killing an 18-year-old woman despite evidence that proves he's innocent.
The newly-released trailer opens with Bryan and Walter sitting in a courtroom as a judge hands down a death sentence. Walter's son, John (C.J. LeBlanc), stands up and declares his father’s innocence. When the judge orders John to sit down, he refuses, saying he won't if they're going to kill his father for no reason. The judge and court officers then subdue a distraught John.
"They convicted an innocent man," Bryan says later in the trailer. "I was taught to fight for the people who need the help the most."
In another scene, Bryan is seen sitting at a table in a small room filled people who said they were with Walter the morning the woman was killed.
“I think we can build a case strong enough to bring him home,” a determined Bryan says, “and I’m not going to stop until I’ve done that.”
"Your life is still meaningful, and I'm gonna do everything possible to keep them from taking it," Bryan tells Walter later in the trailer.
The real-life Stevenson is now a professor at New York University Law School. He previously founded the Equal Justice Initiative to defend the wrongly condemned and convicted. He has won relief for dozens of condemned prisoners, argued five times before the U.S. Supreme Court, and won national acclaim for his work challenging bias against the poor and people of color.
Shot almost entirely on location in and around Atlanta, Georgia, with a few scenes also filmed in Montgomery, Alabama, “Just Mercy” is written by Andrew Lanham and Destin Daniel Cretton and directed by Cretton.
"Just Mercy" is set to be released in select theaters on Dec. 25 and nationwide on Jan. 10, 2020.
Watch the full trailer below:
