The Trial of the Chicago 7 filming in New Jersey

Oscar winner Aaron Sorkin’s long stalled project The Trial of the Chicago 7, starring Michael Keaton, Eddie Redmayne, Frank Langella and Sacha Baron Cohen, among others, is now filming in New Jersey.

The production, which previously filmed in Chicago, is shooting at the Farleigh Dickinson university in Madison and the College of Saint Elizabeth (CSE) in Morristown this week.

“The fact that they chose CSE and New Jersey speaks highly of the College and the state as a great shooting location for world-class productions such as this," Patricia Devlin, the college’s director of conference and event services, said in a statement.

The film follows the 1969 trial of a group of men who faced charges —including conspiracy and inciting to riot — after a counterculture uprising and Vietnam War protest outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. 

The Chicago Seven includes Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen), an activist who co-founded the Youth International Party, known as Yippies; Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), chairman and co-founder of the Black Panther Party; Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), co-founder of Students for a Democratic Society; anti-war activist Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong); Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), an organizer of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

Keaton plays progressive lawyer and former attorney general Ramsey Clark, and William Hurt portrays John Mitchell, the attorney general at the time of the trial. Langella plays Judge Julius Hoffman, who ordered Seale to be chained and gagged during the trial.

Sorkin won a best adapted screenplay Oscar in 2011 for The Social Network and has six Emmys for The West Wing.

Paramount Pictures is due to release The Trial of the Chicago in theatres on 2 October, 2020.