Divine Write Pictures To Work Martin Luther King Jr. Biography ‘The Seminarian’ As TV Series

Lawrence “LAW” Watford’s Divine Write Pictures has secured the rights to Patrick Parr’s The Seminarian: Martin Luther King Jr. Comes of Age for adaptation into a television project. The book, published by Chicago Review Press in 2018, delves into Martin Luther King Jr.’s transformative years as a student at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, highlighting his lesser-known romance with Betty Moitz, the white daughter of the school dietitian.

Watford, alongside partners Jack Manning III and Tiffany Elle Burgess under their Tyler Street Films banner, plans to bring this story to life. All three collaborators are graduates of Hampton University, a historically Black college in Virginia.

Explaining his interest in the project, Watford said, “I’m always attracted to stories that have incongruence as a central theme so when I first read about Dr. King’s relationship with Betty Moitz in the press, I was intrigued — as I imagine most people probably were.”  He emphasized the goal of humanizing MLK by exploring the individuals and events that influenced his journey toward becoming a civil rights icon.

The deal was negotiated by entertainment attorney Laverne Berry for Divine Write Pictures, with Susan Schulman representing Parr and the Chicago Review Press.

Tyler Street Films, known for Flipped, Catharsis, and the animated short Skin Like Mine, adds this ambitious project to its growing portfolio.