Terrence Howard to star in Delta Blues drama series after vowing to retire after Empire

Deadline

Howard, who last year said he planned to quit acting after Empire was completed, will join Star alum Evan Ross in Delta Blues. The potential drama series, which Ozark producer Zero Gravity Management will shop to networks and streaming services, revolves around W.C. Handy, who is widely considered the Godfather of the blues. Neither Howard nor Ross will play Handy. Howard said that the script was “better than bacon”, forcing him to change his mind about retirement. “I was done. But, I am putting retirement on hold to tell this story,” he said. "The story begins in 1903 in the Mississippi Delta, a land wounded from a Civil War that freed slaves only to shackle them once more under Jim Crow," per Deadline. "That’s where W.C. Handy first heard the rhythmic strains of a lone bluesman at a train depot in Tutwiler, Mississippi. At the time, minstrel shows were the main form of popular entertainment and Handy led one of the most famous troupes, Mahara’s Minstrels. But Handy would soon discover a new African American folk music echoing across the cotton fields, prisons and watering holes of the Mississippi Delta. And when a black Masonic group, the Knights of Pythias, asks him to lead its brass band, Handy quits the Minstrels and moves to the Delta."