During a Lincoln Center/N.Y. Film festival discussion a little more than eight years ago, director Oliver Stone complained about conservative corporate thinking blocking the films he wanted to make. “Michael Eisner decides I can’t make a movie about Martin Luther King, Jr [because] they’ll be rioting at the gates of Disneyland!,” he said. “That’s bullshit! But that’s what the new world order is.”

That was then and this is now, but I’d much rather see a King movie that Stone might direct rather than a just-announced DreamWorks version that Steven Spielberg, Suzanne de Passe and Madison Jones in league with DreamWorks chief Stacey Snider. A voice is telling me it’ll be far too reverent. A voice is telling me it’ll begin with King’s murder at the Lorraine Motel and then flashback to King’s childhood years. A voice is telling me that with the King family involved DreamWorks will never touch King’s numerous assignations.

I recall reading that a King biopic script was written for Stone sometime in the late ’90s, perhaps by Stephen J. Rivele or Stanley Weiser or somebody like that. I’d spend time tracking it down but I have a 2 pm screening to catch. Later…