Matthew McConaughey returning to HBO to reprise his A Time to Kill role

Variety

Variety reports that the former True Detective star is set to return to his breakthrough John Grisham role of Jake Brigance, which he played in the 1996 Joel Schumacher courtroom crime drama A Time to Kill, co-starring Sandra Bullock and Samuel L. Jackson. The HBO series will be based on Grisham's 2020 novel A Time for Mercy, the third book in Grisham's Jake Brigance series after A Time to Kill and Sycamore Row. A Time to Kill was McConaughey's first high-profile role after becoming noticed in 1993's Dazed and Confused. In A Time to Kill, Brigance defends a Black man (Jackson) who killed the two white men who savagely raped and murdered his daughter. In A Time for Mercy, Brigance must defend a young man who killed his mother’s boyfriend, a deputy sheriff, with the boy claiming the man was abusive towards his mother, himself, and his little sister. No writer is currently attached to the series. The last time McConaughey was on HBO, in 2014, he earned an Emmy nomination for lead actor for True Detective. Last year, when A Time to Kill director Schumacher died, McConaughey released a statement saying he owed his career to the director and the Jake Brigance role. “Joel not only took a chance on me, he fought for me," said McConaughey. "Knowing the studio might never approve a relatively unknown like myself for the lead in A Time to Kill, he set up a secret screen test for me on a Sunday morning in a small unknown studio because as he stated, ‘Even if you do great, you may not get the part, so I don’t want the industry to ever think you screen tested and DID NOT get the job.’"