Showtime has debuted the first trailer for the upcoming limited series adaptation of The Good Lord Bird developed by and starring Ethan Hawke (First Reformed) as controversial abolitionist John Brown. The trailer can be viewed in the player below!
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Based on the National Book Award-winning novel by James McBride, The Good Lord Bird is told from the point of view of Onion (Joshua Caleb Johnson), a fictional enslaved boy who becomes a member of Brown’s motley family of abolitionist soldiers during Bleeding Kansas – a time when the state was a battleground between pro- and anti-slavery forces – and eventually finds himself participating in the famous 1859 raid on the U.S. Armory at Harpers Ferry. Brown’s raid failed to initiate the slave revolt he intended, but was the event that started the Civil War.
Alongside Hawke, who also executive produces the series, the cast features Ellar Coltrane (Boyhood), Hubert Point-Du Jour (Madam Secretary), Beau Knapp (Seven Seconds), Nick Eversman (Wild), Jack Alcott (Champaign ILL) and Mo Brings Plenty (Yellowstone), with guest appearances from Daveed Diggs (Snowpiercer) as abolitionist Frederick Douglass, David Morse (Escape at Dannemora) as Dutch Henry Sherman, Steve Zahn (War of the Planet of the Apes), Maya Hawke (Stranger Things), Wyatt Russell (Lodge 49) and Orlando Jones (American Gods).
The series is executive produced by Jason Blum, Ethan & Ryan Hawke, Mark Richard, Padraic McKinley, Jeremy Gold, Marci Wiseman, Albert Hughes, James McBride, Brian Taylor, Marshall Persinger and David Schiff.
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The Good Lord Bird is set to premiere on Showtime on Sunday, August 9 at 10 p.m. EST.
