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Isaiah Washington is set to star in Blue Caprice, a thriller about the sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington, DC, area in October 2002. Alexandre Moors is directing the project.

Washington will play John Allen Williams, who joined the Nation of Islam and changed his surname to Muhammad years before going on a shooting spree with a young accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, that took the lives of at least 10 randomly selected people in the fall of 2002. The pair was caught after the authorities informed the public to look for a former police car, a blue Chevy Caprice, that Muhammad had purchased. Williams was eventually tried, convicted and executed by lethal injection in 2009.

Washington talks about what attracted him to the role:

This was another piece that scared me. Once you get to the pinnacle–and I did, and I have, and I’m proud that I’ve worked over 25 years to finally make my statement, with my aesthetic, with my intellect, with my performance skills, and Dr. Burke–what can you do after that? So I decided, because I’m very competitive, that I’m competing with myself now. I’m being very strategic and picky to find things that are going to be as provocative and controversial and leave people dialoguing about not just my performance but about the entire piece. And I’ve been waiting for the right kind of character to come along. I think it’s really working out for me. I have no agent, no manager, it’s just all the right projects are coming because that’s the prayer I’m putting out into the universe, like Kahlil Gibran. So this piece scared the bejeezus out of me. [Director] Alexander Moors is the co-writer and a wonderful filmmaker. He did the video with Kanye West called “Runaway.” As soon as I saw his vision for that, I just agreed to do the piece. We’re quite sure it’s going to be a darling for the Sundance Film Festival, and be extremely controversial. And that’s what I like. Go back to the early days of Spike Lee, and when you saw his movies, whether you loved it or hated it, you knew you were going to be debating it.

Will you be watching?