Apple Announces Black Panther Drama 'The Big Cigar'

Apple has announced "The Big Cigar", a six episode limited series executive produced and written by Jim Hecht (“Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty”).

The series is based on the magazine article from Joshuah Bearman (“Argo”) who will also executive produce alongside showrunner Janine Sherman Barrois (“Claws,” “The Kings of Napa”) and Don Cheadle (“No Sudden Move,” “Black Monday,” “House of Lies”), who will direct the first two episodes. André Holland (“The Eddy,” “Moonlight”) is in discussions to star as Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton.

"The Big Cigar" tells the extraordinary, hilarious, almost-too-good-to-be-true story of how Newton relied on his best friend, Bert Schneider, the Hollywood producer behind “Easy Rider,” to elude a nationwide manhunt and escape to Cuba while being pursued into exile by the FBI.


Written by Hecht, from a story by Bearman and Hecht, "The Big Cigar" hails from Warner Bros. Television, where Sherman Barrois and her Folding Chair Productions are under an overall deal. The drama is executive produced by Hecht and Sherman Barrois, as well as Bearman, Joshua Davis, and Arthur Spector (“Little America”), through their production company Epic, a division of Vox Media Studios.

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