Jamie Foxx film in production is set in Jackson; also will star Tommy Lee Jones

Jamie Foxx is producing and starring in an Amazon Prime movie titled “The Burial” about Mississippi’s largest civil case that awarded a Biloxi funeral service owner $500 million in the mid-1990s.

While “The Burial” is set in Jackson, the Mississippi Film Office said the movie will have only minimal filming, if any, in Jackson.

The civil case judgment featured in the movie came from the lawsuit of Willie Gary-Jeremiah O’Keefe vs. Loewen Funeral Group tried before a jury in Jackson in 1995.

In addition to Oscar-winning actor Foxx, “The Burial” also will star fellow Academy Award-winning actor Tommy Lee Jones.

Foxx will play flamboyant civil attorney Willie E. Gary, who agrees to take on the case of Jeremiah “Jerry” O’Keefe, to be played by Jones. O’Keefe was a decorated World War II veteran and former Mayor of Biloxi who filed the suit against monopolistic Canadian funeral home company, The Loewen Group.

“No, Jamie Foxx won’t be coming to Jackson,” said Nina Parikh of the Mississippi Film Office. “They are doing all the principal production in New Orleans. They might send a cameraman up for some exteriors, but that is about it.”

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Mississippi does remain a prime area for films, Parikh said. The Morgan Freeman picture, “The Minute You Wake Up Dead,” finished production in Canton in February.

Parikh said the same group that produced the Freeman movie would be making another smaller film in Canton starting later this month.

“We also had a big premiere last weekend of the Bruce Willis action movie that was shot in downtown Jackson,” Parikh said.

As for “The Burial,” it is based on a 1999 New Yorker article written by Jonathan Harr. The article was adapted for the screen by Doug Wright. New York screenwriter and director Maggie Betts will direct. “The Burial” will be her third feature. The film also stars Dorian Missick and Mamoudau Athie.

The teaser for “The Burial” states: “A lawyer helps a funeral homeowner save his family business from a corporate behemoth. In a move to bring resonance to a dry case, the lawyer digs up a complex web of race, power and oppression that forces everyone to examine their prejudices.”

O’Keefe was a small but independent funeral homeowner in Biloxi. He earned the Navy Cross as a pilot at the Battle of Okinawa, where he shot down five Japanese planes in a day as part of the U.S. Navy’s “Death Rattlers.”

After the war, O’Keefe returned home to Biloxi, where he and his wife, Annette, raised 13 children. O’Keefe later became a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives. He was Mayor of Biloxi from 1973 to 1981.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Jamie Foxx is producing a film about Mississippi's largest civil case