Will Packer has joined with Paulist Productions to develop and produce The Innocence Of Joan Little, a miniseries based on James Reston Jr’s 1977 book about a young black woman who in the mid-1970s in North Carolina stabbed her white jailer/rapist and was tried for capital murder.
According to Deadline, Paulist Productions, a faith-based film and TV production company, optioned the book under its first-look deal with Author Solutions after it had been re-released in 2000 through e-book publisher iUniverse. The book details Little’s landmark 1974 trial, which drew international attention regarding a woman’s right to kill a rapist in self-defense, civil rights, prisoners’ rights, and capital punishment. She was eventually acquitted.