One of the numerous heartwarming stories that came out of last year’s U.S presidential election was “A Butler Well Served by This Election” written by Wil Haygood for the Washington Post, about Eugene Allen, a black man who had served as a butler and maitre’d at the White House for eight presidential administrations (from Truman to Reagan), and how excited he was to have been able to vote for now-President Barack Obama.
Sony Pictures acquired the feature rights to the article a few weeks after the election, and now Variety is reporting that Danny Strong (Recount) will be adapting the script for The Butler for producer Laura Ziskin (As Good as It Gets, the Spider-Man series).
It’s too early to tell whether or not the film will have the same ending that the feature article did (it ends with former butler Allen’s wife’s death a day before the election) or if there will be some schmaltzy scene at the White House during a fictional version of Obama’s inauguration.
I pray that the latter will not happen.