The Trial of the Chicago 7

The Trial of the Chicago 7 starring Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is due to hit Netflix next month. The film, which is being released in cinemas and on Netflix simultaneously in the same model as The Irishman, is directed by The West Wing’s Aaron Sorkin and is already being touted as a major award contender for next year’s Oscars.

The screenplay, also written by Sorkin, and the official transcript of the trial, edited by Mark L. Levine, will both be available in November. Both books tell the story of the 1969 trial of seven prominent anti-Vietnam War activists in Chicago. Originally there were eight defendants, but one, Bobby Seale, was severed from the trial by Judge Julius Hoffman – after Hoffman had ordered Seale bound and gagged in court.

The defendants were a mix of counterculture revolutionaries such as Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, and political activists such as Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, and David Dellinger, the last a longtime pacifist who was a generation older than the others. Their lawyers argued that the right to free speech was on trial, whether that speech concerned lifestyles or politics.

This is the account of one of the most infamous trials in recent American history.