Screenwriter Gregory Allen Howard, who deftly adapted stories of historical black figures in “Remember the Titans” starring Denzel Washington, “Ali” with Will Smith and “Harriet” with Cynthia Erivo, has died. He was 70 years old.
Howard died Friday at a Miami hospital of heart failure, according to publicist Jeff Sanderson.
Howard became the first black writer to write a drama that grossed $100 million at the box office when “Titans” passed that milestone in 2000. It was about a real-life black coach who arrives at a newly integrated Virginia school and helps Manage your soccer team. to victory. He had the iconic line: “I don’t care if you like each other or not. But you will respect each other.”
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Howard said he searched Hollywood for the story to no avail. So he took a chance and wrote the script himself. “They didn’t expect it to make a lot of money, but it became a monster, making $100 million,” he said. “It made my career,” he told the Vallejo, California, Times-Herald in 2009. The movie made the Associated Press list of the top 25 sports movies ever made.
Howard followed “Remember the Titans” with “Ali,” Michael Mann’s 2002 biopic about Muhammad Ali. Smith became famous for playing Ali and was nominated for an Oscar for best actor.
Pictured: Gregory Allen Howard attends the Orpheum Theater on October 29, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. Gregory Allen Howard, who wrote “Remember the Titans,” died at age 70 in Miami of heart failure.
(Leon Bennett/Wire Image)
Howard also produced and co-wrote 2019’s “Harriet,” about abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Erivo headlined a cast that included Leslie Odom Jr., Clarke Peters, and Joe Alwyn.
“I got into this business to write about the complexity of the black man. I wanted to write about Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Marcus Garvey. I think it takes a black man to write about black men,” he said. the Times Herald.
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Born in Virginia, his family moved frequently due to his stepfather’s career in the Navy. After attending Princeton University and graduating with a degree in American history, Howard briefly worked at Merrill Lynch on Wall Street before moving to Los Angeles at age 20 to pursue a writing career.
He has written for television and penned the play “Tinseltown Trilogy,” which focused on three men in Los Angeles during the Christmas season as their stories interconnect and inform each other.
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Howard also wrote “The Harlem Renaissance,” a limited series for HBO, “Misty,” the story of prima ballerina Misty Copeland, and “This Little Light,” the story of Fannie Lou Hamer. Most recently, he wrote the civil rights project “Power to the People” for producer Ben Affleck and Paramount Pictures.
He is survived by a sister, Lynette Henley; a brother, Michael Henley; two nieces and one nephew.
