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Charlie Walker, a San Francisco business owner and social justice icon who was portrayed by Mike Colter in the 2022 biopic I’m Charlie Walker, died Thursday in his hometown, it was announced. He was 89.

Colter, perhaps best known for his turns as Marvel hero Luke Cage, starred alongside Safiya Fredericks and Dylan Baker in the June release from Famm Films and Shout! Studios that was directed by Patrick Gilles.

The son of sharecropper parents, Walker became a successful trucker and in the 1960s led protests to open public construction jobs to Black contractors who were being deliberately snubbed.

He hired trucks that cleaned up San Francisco Bay after a devastating 1971 oil spill, helped good friend and then-Assembly member Willie Brown safely exit City Hall after the 1978 assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk and became one of the first Black employees at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Last year,...

The 1971 San Francisco oil spill that dumped more than 800,000 gallons of crude off its coast was an environmental disaster. But for a shrewd Black trucking entrepreneur named Charlie Walker, it was a golden opportunity to puncture the racism in his industry and to make some serious cash from a rich, embattled oil company. For as long as the system let him, of course.

In telling the story of Walker’s crafty exploits saving a beach and fighting discrimination, the independently made “I’m Charlie Walker” from writer-director Patrick Gilles is its own amorphous discharge, if not so slick.

It boasts a commanding, old-school star-wattage turn from Mike Colter (“Luke Cage”) as the hustling, tussling Walker, but its mix of sidelined Black history and fight-the-power narrative is too messy to have the impact it should, especially after the handful of memorable black-themed Bay Area stories we’ve gotten of late.

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Exclusive: Shout! Studios has acquired North American rights to Famm Films’ topical drama I’m Charlie Walker, starring Mike Colter, following a competitive bidding situation. Shout! Factory’s multi-platform entertainment distribution and production arm plans to release the film across all major entertainment platforms, beginning with a theatrical day-and-date launch later this year.

The film based on a true story picks up in 1971, as two oil tankers violently collide off the San Francisco coast, spilling millions of gallons of crude oil and creating an environmental disaster. Against all odds, trucking and construction entrepreneur Charlie Walker (Colter) is then able to secure one of the most lucrative contracts to clean the coastline threatening much of the San Francisco Bay, with only three trucks, an incredible work ethic and a whole lot of heart. Pic recounts the racial discrimination Walker endured as he tries to save the coastline,...

• Two-time Oscar winner Jessica Lange will join Mark Wahlberg and Brie Larson in Paramount’s remake of The Gambler. The American Horror Story star will play the wealthy mother of Wahlberg’s character, who is struggling with debt. The 64-year-old actress can be seen next in the thriller In Secret, with Oscar Isaac and Elizabeth Olsen (out Feb. 21). [Deadline]

• Helena Bonham Carter is in talks to star alongside Carey Mulligan (Inside Llewyn Davis) in Suffragette, about the early days of grassroots campaigning for women’s civic rights. Sarah Gavron (Brick Lane) is set to direct. [Variety]

• Rodrigo Santoro (Love Actually) will co-star in The 33,...

Mike Colter, who can currently be seen on the hit dramas “The Good Wife” and “American Horror Story: Coven,” is set to star in the indie movie “America Is Still the Place” alongside Dylan Baker (“Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues”), TheWrap has learned. Written and directed by Patrick Gilles, “America Is Still the Place” is based on the book of the same name by Charlie Walker, who will be played by Colter in the film. Story follows Walker as he’s hired by Tower Oil to clean up an oil spill on Stinson Beach after a tanker collision near the Golden Gate.