Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx and Brie Larson in the powerful first ‘Just Mercy’ trailer

Erik Anderson September 4, 2019

(L-r) Jamie Foxx as Walter McMillian and Michael B. Jordan as Bryan Stevenson in Warner Bros. Pictures’ drama JUST MERCY, a Warner Bros. Pictures release
(Photo: Jake Giles Netter)

“You ultimately judge the civility of a society not by how it treats the rich, the powerful, the protected and the highly esteemed, but by how it treats the poor, the disfavored and the disadvantaged”
Bryan Stevenson

The first trailer for one of Warner Bros prime awards contenders, Just Mercy, is here.

Michael B. Jordan (Black Panther, Creed, Creed II) and Oscar winners Jamie Foxx (Ray, Baby Driver, Django: Unchained) and Brie Larson (Room, The Glass Castle, Captain Marvel) star in Just Mercy, a true story drama that brings one of the most important stories of our time to the big screen.

Award-winning filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton (The Glass Castle, Short Term 12) directed the film from a screenplay he co-wrote, based on the award-winning nonfiction bestseller by Bryan Stevenson.

Just Mercy follows young lawyer Bryan Stevenson (Jordan) and his history-making battle for justice. After graduating from Harvard, Bryan had his pick of lucrative jobs. Instead, he heads to Alabama to defend those wrongly condemned or who were not afforded proper representation, with the support of local advocate Eva Ansley (Larson). One of his first, and most incendiary, cases is that of Walter McMillian (Foxx), who, in 1987, was sentenced to die for the notorious murder of an 18-year-old girl, despite a preponderance of evidence proving his innocence and the fact that the only testimony against him came from a criminal with a motive to lie. In the years that follow, Bryan becomes embroiled in a labyrinth of legal and political maneuverings and overt and unabashed racism as he fights for Walter, and others like him, with the odds—and the system—stacked against them.

The main cast also includes Rob Morgan (Mudbound) as Herbert Richardson, a fellow prisoner who also sits on death row awaiting his fate; Tim Blake Nelson (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs) as Ralph Myers, whose pivotal testimony against Walter McMillian is called into question; Rafe Spall as Tommy Chapman, the DA who is fighting to uphold Walter’s conviction and sentence; O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Straight Outta Compton) as Anthony Ray Hinton, another wrongly convicted death row inmate whose cause is taken up by Bryan; and Karan Kendrick (The Hate U Give) as Walter’s wife, Minnie McMillian, who stands by her husband.

The film is produced by two-time Oscar nominee Gil Netter (Life of Pi, The Blind Side), Asher Goldstein (Short Term 12) and Michael B. Jordan. Bryan Stevenson, Mike Drake, Niija Kuykendall, Gabriel Hammond, Daniel Hammond, Scott Budnick, Jeff Skoll and Charles D. King served as executive producers.

Cretton co-wrote the screenplay with Andrew Lanham (The Glass Castle), based on Stevenson’s book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Published in 2014 by Spiegel & Grau, the book has spent more than 150 weeks on The New York Times Best Sellers List, and counting. It was also named one of the year’s best books by a number of top publications, including TIME Magazine. For the book, Stevenson also won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, an NAACP Image Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonfiction.

Cretton’s behind-the-scenes creative team included director of photography Brett Pawlak, production designer Sharon Seymour, editor Nat Sanders and composer Joel P. West, all of whom previously collaborated with the director on The Glass Castle. They are joined by costume designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck (Detroit, Roman J. Israel, Esq.).

Just Mercy will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (which kicks off tomorrow) and the Mill Valley Film Festival next month. It is slated for limited release on December 25, 2019 and will go wide on January 10, 2020 by Warner Bros. Pictures.

Here is the first trailer.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.