This was originally filmed in 2007 with
Anthony Mackie starring as Bolden. Director
Dan Pritzker thought that what he had shot "just didn't work", so he shelved it. Extensive rewrites and reshoots took place from 2009 to 2010, but Pritzker shelved the film again.
Three months of even more reshoots were scheduled from 2014 to 2015, with a mostly new cast and crew. Mackie, whose career had taken off in the interim, was no longer available, so he was replaced by
Gary Carr. (Mackie still appears as Bolden in
Louis (2010), which was filmed at at the same time as this film and completed first.)
Several more days of reshoots took place in 2016, and the film was finally completed in 2018 and released in 2019. According to Pritzker, a little over 10% from the original 2007 shoot remains in the finished film.
