Apple TV+ orders true-crime limited series ‘Manhunt’ yesterday from Emmy, Golden Globe, PGA and WGA-nominated writer/producer Monica Beletsky who is also the showrunner and an executive producer.
“Manhunt” is a true-crime series based on the astonishing events of the Lincoln assassination, aftermath and best-selling book by James Swanson.
Tobias Menzies, the 2021 Emmy Award winner for Lead Actor in a Limited Series, will play Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s war secretary and friend who was driven nearly mad by the pressure to arrest John Wilkes Booth and carry out Lincoln’s legacy. Carl Franklin, who has been nominated for an Emmy, will direct and executive produce the project.
Part historical fiction, part conspiracy thriller, “Manhunt” will take audiences into the aftermath of the first American presidential assassination and the fight to preserve and protect the ideals that were the foundation of Lincoln’s Reconstruction plans — issues that reverberate into the present day.
Mary Simms, a former slave of the doctor who treated Booth’s injury and granted him safe refuge after his crime, is one of the series’ prominent Black historical individuals whose lives were entwined with the escape, manhunt, and following a high-crime investigation.
