Gregory Allen Howard, Remember The Titans And Ali Writer, Dies At 70
Groundbreaking screenwriter and playwright Gregory Allen Howard passed away today at the age of 70. Howard made waves when his spec script about a real-life Black coach coming into a newly segregated Virginia school and helping lead their football team to victory hit Hollywood and was snapped up by Jerry Bruckheimer. Ultimately, they'd hire Denzel Washington to play the lead coach, Herman Boone, and the rest is history. "Remember the Titans" would go on to break the $100 million mark at the box office in 2000, a surprise hit for Buena Vista and its parent company, Walt Disney Pictures.
This would mark the first-ever accomplishment of a spec sale leading to a $100 million+ hit from a screenwriter of color and set Howard as Hollywood's go-to guy when it came to adapting the stories of historical Black figures.
Like most screenwriters, a good amount of Howard's work would remain unproduced, but he did collaborate with icons like Morgan Freeman and Ridley Scott. The script he worked on with Freeman was about the true WW2 story of the 761st Tank Battalion which had the nickname "Black Panthers" due to their logo of a screaming panther and the fact that the entire battalion was almost entirely made up of Black soldiers. The project he had with Scott was called "Factor X," about the law enforcement officials who hunted the serial killer known as "BTK." Even though they had Eric Bana and Terrence Howard attached, the movie ended up not happening.
The Champ gets his due
Howard followed up "Remember the Titans" with "Ali," the Michael Mann-directed biopic of the greatest boxer of all time, Muhammad Ali. This was an early dramatic turn for its star, Will Smith, who packed on the muscle to play The Champ and was rewarded for it by being nominated for the Best Actor Oscar.
Funnily enough, Howard wrote "Ali" first and only stumbled upon Herman Boone's story when he moved back to his native Virginia after completing the first draft of the script. He found the story so compelling he put his paid work on hold and wrote "Remember the Titans" on spec, meaning he wrote it without being hired to, so there was no guarantee of his work ever making it to the screen, let alone getting bought. Of course, we know how that turned out.
Before his success in Hollywood, Howard was known for his play "Tinseltown Trilogy," which focused on three men in Los Angeles over Christmastime as their stories interconnect and inform each other.
Harriet Tubman and The Black Panthers
In more recent times, Gregory Allen Howard successfully produced and co-wrote 2019's "Harriet," about the famous abolitionist Harriet Tubman, alongside director Kasi Lemmons with Cynthia Erivo leading a strong cast, including Leslie Odom Jr., Clarke Peters, and Joe Alwyn.
He also has a project in development with Ben Affleck producing called "Power to the People," which chronicles the friendship of Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, the founders of The Black Panthers. George Tillman Jr. is set to produce, alongside Affleck, and possibly direct.
Howard was Princeton educated and turned away from a surely profitable career as a Wall Street broker in order to work in the arts and both the stage and screen are better off for it. Over the course of his career, Howard has helped bring awareness to some powerful Black figures through his art and got to do so by collaborating with the best performers, producers, and directors in the business.
Hopefully, we still get some more of his work translated up on that silver screen, whether it's one of his still-in-development projects or one of his unproduced scripts finds a new life in the wake of its author's passing. Howard was an incredibly strong writer and his voice will be missed.