Hulu orders Sammy Davis Jr. limited series from Lee Daniels, starring Elijah Kelley

The Hollywood Reporter

The streamer has given an eight-episode order to the limited series that was first revealed in 2019. The untitled series, based on Wil Haygood’s book In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis Jr., reteams Daniels and Kelley, who starred in Daniels' Fox musical drama Star. The untitled series "will chart his rise from childhood stardom on the vaudeville stage where he became one of the most famous Black entertainers of the 1950s and ’60s (and the only Black member of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack)," per The Hollywood Reporter. "At the same time, he spent most of his career surrounded by controversy and ridicule — over his affairs with white film stars, his 1960 marriage to Swedish actress May Britt, his conversion to Judaism, his closeness to the Kennedys (and later Richard Nixon) and his problems with alcohol and drugs." When the series was first announced in 2019, Tom Hanks was on board as a producer. It's unclear if Hanks is still involved.