New memoir from BlacKkKlansman author to become TV series

Hulu and 20th Television are in early development on Hip Hop Cop, a television series adaptation of Ron Stallworth's memoir The Gangs of Zion (2024), It's Ron Stallworth's first book since the 2018 release of Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime, sources have learned. The project is being executive produced by Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson's G-Unit Film & Television and Ashok Amritraj's Hyde Park Entertainment Group.



Multi-award-winning filmmakers Kevin Willmott (pictured) and Anthony Hemingway will write and direct the series, respectively. Willmott and Stallworth reunite after working together on the critically acclaimed 2018 film BlacKkKlansman , based on the latter’s book, for which Willmott won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, which he shares with Charlie Wachtell, David Rabinowitz and Spike Lee.

Hip Hop Cop is not a sequel to BlacKkKlansman , but a continuation of Stallworth’s life story, sources say. Set against the backdrop of the rise of rap and hip-hop across America in the 1990s, the series tells the extraordinary, exciting, sometimes absurd and always provocative true story of Ron as he goes undercover for the Salt Lake City police.

A film adaptation of The Gangs of Zion was previously in the works for 2023 by Hyde Park, who owns the rights to the book, with Willmott set to write the script. The project was rebuilt for this television series from Hulu and 20th Television.

Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson is an executive producer for G-Unit Film & Television, Inc. along with Ashok and Priya Amritraj for Hyde Park, Willmott, and Hemingway.

Stallworth is an author, speaker, television reporter, and former police detective.

Hemingway currently serves as executive producer and director on Ryan Murphy’s series All’s Fair, starring Kim Kardashian, for 20th TV and Hulu. He previously directed and co-executive produced FX’s Emmy Award-winning series The People V. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, for which Hemingway received an individual directing nomination. He most recently produced and directed the third season of Starz series Power Book IV: Force.