‘Just Mercy’ Movie Opens Nationwide With a Message and Big Box Office Receipts

Just Mercy, the movie adap­ta­tion of Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) Executive Director Bryan Stevenson​’s book of the same name, cel­e­brat­ed its nation­wide release on January 10, 2020 with week­end tick­et sales of more than $9.7 mil­lion. The film, which focus­es on the wrong­ful con­vic­tion of Walter McMillian—one of Stevenson’s ear­ly death-penal­ty cas­es — ranked fifth among all movies in domes­tic box office receipts.

McMillian, an African-American man who had angered local law enforce­ment by hav­ing an affair with a white woman, spent six years on Alabama​’s death row after hav­ing been framed for the mur­der of a young white woman. He was exon­er­at­ed in 1993. In inter­views coin­cid­ing with the movie’s release, Stevenson and the film’s stars, Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx, spoke about the impor­tance of telling McMillian’s sto­ry and about the sys­temic issues addressed in the film.

“[M]ost peo­ple in this coun­try don’t want there to be inequal­i­ty and injus­tice,” Stevenson said in an inter­view with WBUR’s Tonya Mosley for NPR’s Here & Now. ​“They don’t want peo­ple to be treat­ed unfair­ly or cru­el­ly. I just think if you get clos­er to it, you’ll be moti­vat­ed to say more, to do more.” His hope, Stevenson said, is that peo­ple who see the movie ​“will walk away with a greater con­scious­ness about why we need to do bet­ter in this coun­try when it comes to cre­at­ing a jus­tice sys­tem that is fair and reliable.” 

In addi­tion to his work rep­re­sent­ing death-row pris­on­ers, Stevenson and EJI spear­head­ed the cre­ation of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a site that memo­ri­al­izes the thou­sands of black peo­ple who have been lynched in the United States. He has spo­ken and writ­ten fre­quent­ly about the con­nec­tions between slav­ery, lynch­ing, and the death penalty. 

“I think the great evil of slav­ery wasn’t invol­un­tary servi­tude. It was this idea that black peo­ple aren’t as good as white peo­ple,” Stevenson (pic­tured) told Here & Now. ​“And that con­tin­ues after the 13^th Amendment. That’s why I’ve argued slav­ery doesn’t end, it just evolves, and we had 100 years of ter­ror­ism and lynch­ing and vio­lence where black peo­ple were pulled out of their homes and beat­en and mur­dered and drowned and tor­tured and lynched. And we’ve nev­er real­ly talked about that. And even though we pay more atten­tion to the civ­il rights era, we haven’t con­front­ed the fact that this pre­sump­tion of dan­ger­ous­ness and guilt that gets assigned to black and brown peo­ple is still with us. It’s why these police encoun­ters with young black peo­ple that end up with lethal vio­lence are so dis­rup­tive and so painful.”

Stevenson joined Jordan and Foxx in speak­ing to ABC’s Nightline. ​“I hope from watch­ing the movie and think­ing more crit­i­cal­ly, peo­ple will kind of see this issue the way I see it,” Stevenson said. ​“I don’t think the thresh­old ques­tion of the death penal­ty is, ​‘Do peo­ple deserve to die for the crimes they’ve com­mit­ted?’ I think the thresh­old ques­tion is, ​‘Do we deserve to kill?’ Do we deserve to kill … if we have a sys­tem of jus­tice that treats you bet­ter if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and inno­cent? If we’re unre­li­able, if we tol­er­ate errors, if we have inno­cent peo­ple on death row, if it’s com­pro­mised by bias and racism … then we don’t deserve to kill. And I don’t think that’s a crazy argument.” 

Jordan, who plays Stevenson, spoke about why he decid­ed to co-pro­duce and star in Just Mercy. ​“I want­ed to make sure as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble could see his sto­ry and know his work. He’s real­ly beat­en the drum for jus­tice non­stop. He’s ded­i­cat­ed his life to it.”

Foxx, whose por­tray­al of McMillian has drawn crit­i­cal acclaim, called Just Mercy the ​“most impor­tant movie I’ve ever done.” Stevenson praised Foxx’s per­for­mance, say­ing, ​“When Jamie plays Walter, I think … he exposed the agony of being wrong­ly con­vict­ed and the pain and anguish of being sep­a­rat­ed from your fam­i­ly.… The trau­ma of hav­ing to live through this hor­rif­ic inti­ma­cy with death and exe­cu­tion. I think if peo­ple can see the real clients, the real peo­ple, they’ll care more about the fact that we con­tin­ue to tol­er­ate so much injustice.” 

Jordan urged view­ers to see the film as a call to action. ​“Find out who your pros­e­cu­tor is in your com­mu­ni­ty. Find out what bills and poli­cies are being passed that direct­ly affect your cir­cum­stances in your com­mu­ni­ty. You know, get out and vote on those things. Speak on those things,” he said.