Jamie Foxx joins Amazon's legal drama The Burial

Jamie Foxx will reportedly produce and star in Amazon Studios’ The Burial, which is centered on a legal battle over a funeral home chain in the 1990s.

Variety reports that The Burial is based on Jonathan Harr’s 1999 article in the New Yorker about the contractual dispute case between funeral home executive Ray Loewen and Mississippi businessman Jeremiah O’Keefe, who hired the flamboyant Willie Gary as an attorney. The jury awarded O’Keefe a total of $500 million, which would bankrupt Loewen’s company.

Novitiate director Maggie Betts has been signed to direct the script, which is written by Pulitzer Prize winner Doug Wright. Amazon Studios, Bobby Shriver Inc, and Double Nickel Entertainment are producing the films, while Bobby Shriver, Double Nickel’s Adam Richman, and Jenette Kahn, along with Datari Turner, are the producers.

Foxx won the Best Actor Oscar for Ray and was nominated in the supporting actor category for Collateral. He was recently seen in Netflix’s Project Power and will lend his voice to Pixar’s Soul for the role of a passionate music teacher. He will also co-star in and produce the upcoming film, They Cloned Tyrone, and the series, Dad Stop Embarrassing Me.