Stone Ponders Martin Luther King Film : Movies: Filmmaker acknowledges that ‘Memphis’ is a possibility but denies serious negotiations.

Amid the controversy surrounding Oliver Stone’s “Nixon,” which opens today, the iconoclast filmmaker is considering for his next project a film about yet another ‘60s icon: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The script is called “Memphis,” the tragic stage of the charismatic civil rights leader’s 1968 assassination.

Stone said “Memphis” is but one of “about eight projects I am considering. . . . Some are in development. Some I will write or co-write. . . . I simply haven’t made up my mind what I will do next.”

“Memphis” was scripted by Stone’s “Nixon” co-writers, Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson, who declined comment.

Sources at Warner Bros. said the studio is in serious discussions with Stone about making “Memphis,” with Cuba Gooding Jr. to star. Stone denied he is in serious talks with the studio.

The details of “Memphis” remain vague, but one source who read the script said it focuses on events leading up to and including King’s assassination, his relationships and his weaknesses as a man--a womanizer who was moody and prone to self-doubt.

*

Warner Bros., no stranger to controversial subject matter, released Stone’s conspiracy epic “JFK” in 1991. It grossed more than $70 million domestically.

The studio also produced Spike Lee’s 1992 homage to another slain activist, “Malcolm X,” a 3 1/2-hour epic that took in $48.2 million at the box office. The same year, Warners released “The Power of One,” which probed racism through the brutality of apartheid in South Africa. That film grossed only $2.8 million.

Stone’s “Nixon” has been attacked by Richard Nixon’s daughters, Julie Nixon Eisenhower and Tricia Nixon Cox, and their husbands, over its portrayal of the 37th president. They accused Stone, his co-writers and the Walt Disney Co. of concocting “imaginary scenes” and of “character assassination.”

In an interview to be broadcast tonight on “Dateline NBC,” Stone said he hoped Nixon’s daughters “would acknowledge their father the way he may have been seen by others and maybe move on to another understanding or a deeper understanding of their own father.”

Disney officials declined to comment.