Why should HBO recreate Harriet Tubman’s historic home when they could use the real one? That’s why U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer is asking the network to make its Tubman biopic at her historic former home in Auburn, New York.
According to The Syracuse Post-Standard, Schumer wants HBO to take advantage of the state’s Film Tax Credit Program. The network would be eligible for refundable credit of 30 percent of costs spent in New York, plus 5 percent of post-production costs.
“When it comes to Harriet Tubman and her Central New York roots, there is no better place for lights, camera and action than Auburn,” Schumer, a Democrat, said.
The biopic was announced last month and will feature How To Get Away With Murder’s Viola Davis as Tubman. It will be based on Kate Clifford Larson’s Bound for the Promised Land.
Tubman, who was a former slave who organized the Underground Railroad to take slaves to the North, won a poll to decide which woman a group would ask President Obama to put on the $20 bill. The group Women on 20s will submit a petition to Obama to ask the Secretary of the Treasury to swap President Andrew Jackson for Tubman.
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