COMING PRETTY SOON : The-’60s-Aren’t-Dead File: There Are <i> Five</i> Black Panther Movies in the Works

With Hollywood now embracing African-American directors and black-themed movies, there’s keen interest in projects about the Black Panthers. “It’s obvious that there are not only great stories (in the Panther movement), but there’s a perception that black subject matter has definite value, that black is green,” says Suzanne de Passe, president of Gordy/De Passe Productions.

De Passe is shepherding one of at least five Black Panther-related projects now in development--and it’s the only one to tell the story from a woman’s point of view. She has bought the rights to the upcoming autobiography of her long-time friend Elaine Brown, who rose from a nightclub waitress to become a top Panther official and a near-miss candidate for the Oakland City Council.

But other film projects will tell the Panther story through the eyes of fictional characters, not leaders like Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. Joel Silver’s production company at Warner Bros. is working with Henry Hampton, executive producer of the acclaimed TV series “Eyes on the Prize,” on a project about a young black man whose life changes when he joins the Panthers. This story--like others in the works--will portray the controversial Panthers in a positive light. “We’re trying to create a story that’s emotional and powerful,” says Matt Tabak, the company’s vice president of development. “We look upon the movement as a very positive one, but one that was repressed by white society.” Charles Burnett, who directed the critical favorite “To Sleep With Anger,” is expected to direct and write that film.

Melvin Van Peebles, who came to fame for his provocative 1971 film “Sweet Sweetback’s Baad-asssss Song,” is also writing a Black Panther project--probably with his son, Mario, co-directing and starring. (The younger Van Peebles’ work includes starring in and directing “New Jack City.”)

Van Peebles, who knew some of the movement’s leaders, said the fictional story he is currently writing will “look at the whole era,” including characters from the Peace and Freedom Party and Students for a Democratic Society. “I want to dispel many of the myths (surrounding the Panthers),” Van Peebles adds. “They were not anti-white, they were pro-black.” Van Peebles’ film will be produced by Robert De Niro’s production company, Tribeca, which is allied with Tri-Star Pictures.

Matty Rich, the young director who turned heads with his independently made “Straight Out of Brooklyn,” says he also hopes to write and direct a Panther project, though it probably won’t be his next project.

Columbia Pictures has hired Anna Hamilton Phelan (“Mask,” “Gorillas in the Mist”) to write a screenplay about prison revolutionary Johnny Spain, a protege of Panther field marshal George Jackson. “Chains,” to be executive-produced by Oliver Stone, tells the story of Spain’s troubled youth as the child of an interracial couple and his 21 years inside high-security prisons.