Earlier today Deadline‘s Michael Fleming urged director Paul Greengrass and producer Scott Rudin to get going on Memphis, their long-gestating docudrama about the last chapter in the life of Martin Luther King. Fleming wrote this because (a) he’s apparently a fan of the Memphis script, but mostly because (b) Oliver Stone and Jamie Foxx are reportedly interested in making some kind of sprawling King biopic with DreamWorks and Warner Bros. Except he doesn’t mention something that Greengrass told me at the after-party for the recent Captain Phillips premiere in Los Angeles. Greengrass had cast an Atlanta-based preacher — apparently an eloquent speech-giver and sermonizer — to play King in Memphis, but the poor guy passed away “three or four months ago,” a friend confides. Greengrass was dispirited by this loss (he didn’t want to go into it during our chat but it was clearly a sore subject for him) and apparently lost his directorial mojo as a result. Or something like that. I should have pushed for more information but an instinct told me to go easy. The next day I tried to learn the preacher’s name but got nowhere. I cold-called three or four feature casting agencies in Atlanta…zip. All I know is what Greengrass told me.