This is a story I am excited to see.
HBO Max is developing The Other Hamilton, a drama series about Jeremiah Hamilton, one of the first Black millionaires in history. Don Cheadle and Steven Soderbergh are executive producing the project that is based on the book “Prince of Darkness: The Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street’s First Black Millionaire” by Shane White.
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The Other Hamilton tells the true story of Jeremiah Hamilton, who escaped Haiti in 1828 and began building his fortune less than a decade later on Wall Street by selling to both white and black entrepreneurs.
Breaking both customs and laws, Hamilton married a white woman, bought a mansion in New Jersey and bought railroad stocks. By the time he died in 1875, he was worth about $2 million (about $42 million today based on inflation); his obituaries described him as the richest black man in America.
Carlos Foglia, Ashley Nicole Black, and Keith Josef Adkins are writing and executive producing the series.
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Cheadle and Karyn Smith-Forge will executive produce under their This Radicle Act Productions banner. In addition to Soderbergh, other executive producers include Steven Baigelman as well as Eli Holzman and Aaron Saidman for Industrial Media.
This isn’t the first time Cheadle tried to tell Hamilton’s story. In 2017 he was working on a feature film of the tycoon and was attached to star in it as well.