Showtime pushes back The Good Lord Bird to give it more context in wake of police brutality protests

Deadline

The miniseries starring Ethan Hawke as abolitionist John Brown, based on James McBride's 2013 novel, has been rescheduled from Aug. 9 to Oct. 4 "to put more context around the abolitionist miniseries as the focus sharpens on the issue of systemic racism in the U.S.," according to Deadline's Peter White. The Good Lord Bird is told from the point of view of Onion, played by Joshua Caleb Johnson, a fictionalized enslaved boy who's a member of Brown’s motley family of abolitionist soldiers who participate in the famous 1859 raid at Harpers Ferry that helped instigate the Civil War. "The network is understood to have consulted with the producers and other voices and is proactively taking an extra pause to consider the content carefully," says White. "It is believed that the network also wants more time to build out a marketing and PR campaign that helps educate and deepens the conversation around the issues."