Director chosen for upcoming movie based on Kent State shootings

Cameron Gorman

A new movie based on background of the Kent State shootings has confirmed its director.

Jay Roach, who also directed “Austin Powers” and “Meet the Fockers,” will produce the movie with Tina Fey whose husband Jeff Richmond, also a producer, attended Kent State.

“It is a cautionary tale,” Roach said. “Kent State was a big event for me, and I remember arguing with my dad about it when I was about 13,” Roach said in an exclusive interview with Deadline Hollywood.

The film, titled “67 Shots,” is to be adapted a book of the same name by Howard Means, by playwright Stephen Belber.

“The tamer version of this now is the NFL protest, the hatred that comes out for any show of what some people consider lack of patriotism,” Roach told Deadline Hollywood. “Back then, these were the days of draft card and flag-burning protests and people clamoring for law and order.”

Other producers for the film include Eric Gurian, Richmond, Michelle Graham and Shivani Rawat and Monica Levinson of ShivHans Pictures.

ShivHans, which is financing the picture, also backed the Bryan Cranston film “Trumbo,” according to the Hollywood Reporter, which was also directed by Roach.

“… There is obviously a political component to all this, but it’s more about respecting the right to protest,” Roach said in his Deadline Hollywood interview. “I delved into this a bit with Trumbo, the idea that dissent is an American tradition. We are a nation founded on dissent and free speech, and it becomes about what happens when law and order trumps that.”

Cameron Gorman is the humanities reporter. Contact her at  [email protected].