Actor Matthew McConaughey will star as the father of imprisoned Detroit drug dealer Rick Wershe Jr. in the movie titled "White Boy Rick," WDIV's Kevin Dietz reports. Filming is set to begin in Detroit and Cleveland in March.
Ricahrd Wershe Jr. in court Sept. 4, 2015
McConaughey will play a blue-collar factory worker trying to keep his family together as the automotive industry collapses.
Scott Franklin, who has won awards for movies like "Black Swan," and the "Wrestler," is producing the movie. Yann Demange is directing.
Wershe hopes the film will help him finally paroled. Wershe, 47, has been serving a life sentence for a cocaine trafficking conviction since he was a teen. The state Parole Board has repeatedly rejected his requests to go free.
"We worked hard," Wershe tells Dietz, referring to the movie. "It took longer than anticipated, but I think it's going to be a good project. I think it's going to show a true story of what happened."
Wershe is at Oaks Correctional Facility in Manistee up north. He was charged with possession with intent to deliver eight kilos of cocaine, which police had found stashed near his house following a May 1987 traffic stop.
He was convicted and sentenced under a 1978 state law that mandated an automatic prison term of life without parole for the possession of 650 grams or more of cocaine. Michigan changed the law in 1998, letting those serving time become parole-eligible. Wershe is the only person sentenced under the old law who is still in prison for a crime committed as a juvenile.
