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News: Julia Roberts Signs for HBO Film About U.S. Supermax Prison ADX

by Ken Miyamoto - updated on April 25, 2022

Julia Roberts has signed to star in and produce ADX, a drama about the real life harrowing and potentially groundbreaking lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Prisons over the treatment of inmates at the infamous ADX supermax facility in the Rocky Mountains. The project is based on a NY Times Magazine article, Inside America’s Toughest Federal Prison, written by Mark Binelli.

Roberts will produce through her Red Om Films banner for HBO Films.

Roberts will play an attorney who receives a letter from an inmate at the remote maximum security prison speaking of the injustices going on in the prison. She partners with another attorney to take on the B.O.P. and to expose the injustices at the ADX. The premise has shades of Roberts’s Erin Brockovich — which she won a Best Actress Oscar for — as well as Best Picture nominee Spotlight.

Known as the ADX, the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado is the highest-security prison in the country and the only federal supermax facility. The “Alcatraz of the Rockies” incarcerates the worst of the worst, most of whom are serving multiple life sentences and thus have little disincentive to, for example, murder a guard or another prisoner. In the words of former ADX warden Robert Hood, “This place is not designed for humanity… It’s not designed for rehabilitation. Period. End of story.”

Source: The Tracking Board

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