At long last, L.A. riots movie heads to the big screen

Racial injustice and confrontation in Los Angeles, for so long a part of the city’s history, haven’t been a huge part of the city’s movie culture.

There has occasionally been a “Crash” and even less occasionally a “Menace II Society.” Mostly, though, events such as the Watts riots of a half-century ago and the L.A. riots of 1992 have been on TV news far more than they have on movie screens.

This summer, “Straight Outta Compton” began to shift the momentum. The rap history made the 1992 unrest a defining narrative event. And now a long-gestating project with the Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley and producer Imagine Entertainment appears to be doing the same.

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An untitled movie Ridley wrote a number of years ago about the L.A. riots is getting the go-ahead, courtesy of Imagine and startup Broad Green Pictures, the latter of which is coming on to finance and distribute the project. Ridley will direct from his own screenplay, with the movie aiming for a spring shoot. Casting is expected to get underway soon.

The film centers on a number of characters experiencing the riots from different perspectives, taking an up-close view of that fraught time period. It has struggled to land backing; it’s not the most commercial bet, and modern Hollywood is increasingly wary of such wagers.

But Broad Green has been looking to make a bigger play, first picking up movies such as the upcoming Sarah Silverman drama “I Smile Back” at festivals, and now stepping up efforts to produce its own material.

Ridley is best known for penning “12 Years a Slave,” which landed him an Oscar; he also co-wrote David O. Russell’s “Three Kings” and created current ABC race/legal series “American Crime.”

Earlier iterations of Ridley’s riots movie with other directors -- including Spike Lee -- failed to get off the ground. But producers are optimistic this time around, noting both the man behind the camera and a timeliness that could help it with audiences.

Brian Grazer, the Imagine principal who will produce the movie, said he was “confident that [Ridley] will capture the magnitude of the events that unfolded and the issues that led up to them. He will show the world why the riots cannot and should not be forgotten.”

Broad Green Pictures founders CEO Gabriel Hammond and Daniel Hammond noted the riots were a “seminal event in our country’s history, the reverberations of which are still far too relevant today.”

There are few easy heroes in events such as the riots, which resulted in dozens of deaths and also didn’t remedy fundamental inequities (though it of course sparked changes in the Los Angeles Police Department). So how hopeful a note the film will strike remains an open question.

The production of “Straight Outta Compton” and Ridley’s movie in a short span shows that Hollywood is now willing to take on race issues that aren’t as neatly sequestered as they were in the past. The specter of 1960’s-era unrest has been a staple of ambitious upscale movies for a long time, including “Selma” and “The Butler” in the last few years. Now, a more modern era is finally getting a look too.

Twitter: @ZeitchikLAT