Toby Maguire will be putting down the spandex spidersuit for a while and work again with Seabuscuit director Gary Ross, on a legal drama set in the mid50s that deals with a real life landmark Brown v. Board of Education case called the Crusaders.
Maguire would play Jack Greenberg, who, as an idealistic lawyer fresh out of law school, joined with NAACP Legal Defense Fund head and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to win a Supreme Court case that ruled segregation in American schools illegal.
Everytime I see Toby I can’t help but see Spiderman. He really owned that role, and I love him in it. But the funny thing is that I like Maguire in these dramatic roles too, and teaming with the same director for Seabiscuit is a good match.
He can distance himself from Spiderman, but he does tend to play the vulnerable eager to please genuinely nice guy. Emo-toby in Spiderman 3 just didn’t work. And this movie is set in the 50s, and if Pleasantville taught us anything, we know that Maguire can pull off the look. Come to think of it, that movie addressed a changing of established values and expectations too.
I really cheer for him, and hope that this story gets played out well. I like courtroom dramas that hit big issues in the heart and I think for this role, Toby will do well.
