Jim Thorpe Film On Fast Track; Tracey Deer Directs Script By ‘Emancipation’s William N. Collage & Help From Collective Of Native American Tribes
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: Thorpe, a drama about the formative years of Native American Olympic track and field Gold Medalist Jim Thorpe, is on a fast track, just in time for Native American Heritage Month.
Director Tracey Deer will direct a script whose latest draft is by William N. Collage (Emancipation). Pic is based on Jim Thorpe: World’s Greatest Athlete, a book by Robert Wheeler, who is exec producer and has provided underlying materials.
The film also has the support and participation of the Thorpe family. Thorpe will focus on Thorpe’s time at Carlisle Industrial Indian School, which became the model for government and church-run Native American boarding schools that pervaded the United States and Canada in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.
its motto ‘Kill the Indian, Save the Man,’ Carlisle isolated Native children from their families and tribal communities, and systematically stripped them of their languages, customs, medicines, religious beliefs, regalia, and even their own names—to assimilate them into mainstream society.
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