Jeremy Irvine has signed on to play the
lead character in director Roland Emmerich's upcoming film about the
Stonewall Inn riots of 1969.
The film, simply titled Stonewall,
is written by open gay playwright-screenwriter Jon Robin Baitz, who
is best know for creating the ABC drama Brothers & Sisters.
A police raid of the Stonewall Inn in
Greenwich Village in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969 was met
with resistance by gay men and drag queens, triggering the modern gay
rights movement.
“It's one of these civil rights
moments, like Rosa Parks,” Emmerich
said last year. “It was the first time that gay people had
shown the police that they should take them seriously.”
Emmerich is best known for big-budget
action films like White House Down and Independence Day.
“Emmerich's way in is to focus on a
young man's political awakening in the backdrop of those riots,”
Deadline.com
reported.
Irvine's breakout film was Steven
Spielberg's 2011 epic war film War Horse, in which he played
the leading character.