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Forest Whitaker is in line to play civil rights leader Martin Luther King in a new biopic for the British director Paul Greengrass, reports the Wrap.

Greengrass's film, titled Memphis, will be shot in a docu-drama style similar to that of his acclaimed 9/11 project United 93. It will centre on the final days of the Baptist minister's life, during which he struggled to balance personal issues with those relating to the fight for black rights prior to his final protest march in Memphis, Tennessee. King was shot and killed following the march, on 4 April 1968, with James Earl Ray later convicted and imprisoned for the murder.

Greengrass's film will also follow the FBI agents who were wiretapping King over suspected communist sympathies at the time of his death. Ray was eventually picked up by police at London's Heathrow airport after travelling there on a false Canadian passport, and extradited back to Tennessee to face trial. He died in jail in 1998 from Hepatitis C at the age of 70 after recanting his confession and spending the rest of his life seeking a trial.

King's family, who are not involved in Greengrass's project, have since made it clear they do not believe Ray was responsible for the killing. The civil rights leader's descendants are working on their own biopic and are said to object to the "warts and all" portrayal the Bourne Ultimatum director is planning. King was alleged to have engaged in a number of extramarital affairs during his lifetime - he is believed to have received anonymous letters from the FBI threatening him with exposure prior to his death - and the film will present him as a figure worried about his marriage and concerned over his legacy due to the emergence of younger rights activists.