Lakeland's Indie Atlantic signs deal to make documentary about Lake County sheriff McCall

For its first documentary, Indie Atlantic Films looked to the heavens, creating “Fly Like a Girl,” a soaring celebration of girls and women in aviation.

For its next project, the Lakeland-based production company will take a more earthbound approach, exploring dark passages from Central Florida’s history.

Indie Atlantic has secured the film rights to Gilbert King’s Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction book “Devil in the Grove” and its sequel, “Beneath a Ruthless Sun.” Both examine the legacy of Willis McCall, the notorious sheriff who ruled Lake County for decades.

With “Devil in the Grove,” published in 2012, King discovered previously unreported details about McCall’s treatment of the Groveland Four, a quartet of Black men accused of raping a white woman in 1949. Torture produced alleged confessions, and three were convicted, with two men sentenced to death. The fourth had been killed during an alleged escape attempt.

Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall led an appeal, and two convictions were overturned. Months later, McCall and a deputy shot Walter Irvin and Samuel Shepherd, killing the latter, claiming the men had tried to escape while being driven through a remote area.

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In 2021, Florida posthumously exonerated the Groveland Four — Charles Greenlee, Ernest Thomas, Irvin and Shepherd.

“Beneath a Ruthless Sun,” published in 2019, examined McCall’s role in the arrest of Jesse Daniels, a mentally impaired teenager, for a 1957 rape. Daniels was locked away in a state hospital for the insane without facing a trial.

Katie McEntire Wiatt, a producer and director with Indie Atlantic Films, said she was captivated by both books, having spent part of her childhood in Central Florida. As she discussed possible future projects with her producing partners, Andy McEntire and Matt Wiatt (her husband), she suggested a documentary based on the stories unearthed in King’s books.

The producers reached out to King through a mutual contact, “and he was incredibly kind and talked to us,” Katie Wiatt said.

Binta Niambi Brown, a producing partner with the newly created Indie Atlantic Studios, negotiated the rights deal with Sean Daily of Hotchkiss Daily & Associates, which represents King. Katie Wiatt, who directed the award-winning “Fly Like a Girl,” is scheduled to direct the not-yet-named documentary.

Wiatt said Indie Atlantic is still in the “discovery stage” of the project and hasn’t determined potential interview subjects or location shooting plans. She said King will serve as a producer on the documentary.

“That’s the great thing about our partnership with him is that we will have access to the extensive and wonderful research that he has done for the books,” she said. “So it's a really wonderful opportunity for us to come alongside him and to work together on that.”

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King is the writer, producer and host of the podcast “Bone Valley,” released last year, which examines the conviction of Leo Schofield for the 1987 murder in Polk County of his wife, Michelle.

“I’m absolutely thrilled to be collaborating with the folks from Indie Atlantic Films,” King said by email. “I’ve been so impressed by their aspirations and their vision for telling this story, and I think their familiarity with central Florida and its history is going to be a great asset to this project. We can’t wait to get started.”

McCall, Lake County's sheriff from 1944 to 1972 and a staunch segregationist, was investigated for civil rights violations and once tried for murder but was never convicted of illegal actions. He died in 1994.

Wiatt said she is eager to detail not only McCall and his sinister reign but also the legacy of journalist Mabel Norris Reese, whose reporting for a weekly newspaper in Lake County often challenged McCall’s official narratives.

Wiatt said the Indie Atlantic team has not yet determined if they might interview living relatives of the Groveland Four or Daniels.

“We haven't gotten to that point quite yet — still being a discovery, you don't get as much into the actual logistics and that kind of stuff,” she said. “But I do know that there are people who were involved in the cases, especially the Jesse Daniels case, who are still living, and a lot of people that were connected to both stories and knew the people.”

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Wiatt said she hopes to begin production this year, though she wouldn’t offer an expected completion date. “Fly Like a Girl” took several years to finish.

“Gilbert King did a fantastic job with the books, and the books are wonderful and I hope everybody reads them,” Wiatt said. “But books, especially books that are large, are sometimes intimidating to people. And I think that not everybody is going to necessarily pick up a book. And I think a film — a documentary film, in particular — is the opportunity to bring these stories to a different audience, the same audience, and in a different way, and just to have them have a wider reach.”

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on Twitter @garywhite13.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Lakeland company gains rights to documentary about notorious sheriff