Wesley Snipes’ Unmade Martin Luther King Jr. Film and the Legacy of “Code Name Zorro”
Wesley Snipes, the action star best known for Blade, once sought to take on a very different kind of role: telling the story of Martin Luther King Jr., specifically focusing on the FBI’s surveillance under J. Edgar Hoover. The project, titled Code Name Zorro, was conceived as a story that went beyond a traditional biopic. Rather than portraying King’s life in a straightforward narrative, the film was to follow an FBI agent, Sullivan, whose job was to undermine King but who eventually comes to sympathize with him.
Snipes planned to produce the film through his own Maandi Media Production company and even hinted that he might appear in a supporting role, though not as King himself. The story was designed to explore the ethical and moral dilemmas faced by those working within the FBI at the time and to shed light on the agency’s intense surveillance of King, which included around-the-clock monitoring. According to reports, Snipes met with filmmaker F. Gary Gray to discuss the project, emphasizing how the government acted as if they didn’t know what had happened to King, despite the pervasive surveillance.
The project, discussed around 2010, never came to fruition, and no widely released film under the title Code Name Zorrohas been produced with Snipes in the lead or as producer. Instead, later films, such as Ava DuVernay’s Selma, went on to tell the story of King and the Civil Rights movement, focusing on his leadership in the fight for voting rights.
Interestingly, the title Code Name Zorro itself has a historical context that predates Snipes’ project. In 1977, comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, along with author Mark Lane, published a book titled Code Name “Zorro”: The Murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. This book explored the FBI’s surveillance of King and suggested a broader conspiracy surrounding his assassination. While Gregory’s work influenced discussions about King, Hoover, and COINTELPRO, there is no evidence that he was involved in Snipes’ film project; the two share only a name and thematic connection.
Ultimately, the story of Snipes’ Code Name Zorro became intertwined with his own personal struggles. Around the same period, Snipes faced tax evasion charges, which eventually led to a prison sentence. Though he never realized his vision for the King project, the concept remains a fascinating “what if” in Hollywood history—an attempt to confront the darker elements of American history through the lens of popular cinema.
Snipes’ project reflects a continuing fascination with how the FBI monitored civil rights leaders and how whistleblowers or insiders might confront institutional wrongdoing. While the film was never made, the combination of Snipes’ vision, Gregory and Lane’s earlier work, and the historical reality of surveillance on King illustrates the enduring tension between art, activism, and truth-telling in American history.
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