Director Stephen Frears ("The Queen," "Mrs. Henderson Presents") is in talks to direct the Screen Gems courtroom drama "The Burial."

Based on a New Yorker Magazine article and adapted by Doug Wright, the story follows Willie Gary, a black personal-injury lawyer from Mississippi who took on the case of Jeremiah O'Keefe, the owner of a local chain of funeral homes who claimed he had been swindled by a major funeral parlor conglomerate.

With the cooperation of O'Keefe's lawyer, an admitted racist, he won $260 million for the plaintiff. Screen Gems snapped up the rights after Warner Bros. Pictures put the project into turnaround.