Kwame Kwei-Armah will direct the upcoming Boston crime drama “Mission Hill,” about the racially charged Charles Stuart murder case.

Actor and playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah will direct the upcoming Boston crime drama “Mission Hill,” about the racially charged Charles Stuart murder case, the production company Compelling Pictures announced this week. Marina Cappi, who runs Marina Studios in Quincy and Canton, is listed as an executive producer on the project.

Michael McGrale (“The Following”) wrote the screenplay for “Mission Hill,” which follows an up-and-coming police officer and veteran detective as they hunt for a killer amid a climate of racial unrest in the city.

In 1989, Charles Stuart murdered his pregnant wife, Carol, on the streets of Mission Hill. Stuart, who was white, blamed the shooting on a fictitious Black man. That accusation set off a series of confrontations between police and Black residents, inflaming long-simmering racial tensions in the city. A few months later, Charles Stuart jumped to his death off the Tobin Bridge. His body was found in the Mystic River the following day.

Compelling Pictures is a production company run by Denis O’Sullivan and East Boston native Jeff Kalligheri. They also produced the Whitney Houston biopic “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” streaming on Netflix.

“We’re honored to tell this story of a city that has been seen in movies we love but rarely from this perspective, and we can’t wait for a global audience to experience this epic, propulsive ride,” O’Sullivan said in a post on the Instagram account for Compelling Pictures.

“Mission Hill” is Kwei-Armah’s second project with Compelling Pictures. He was recently behind the camera for “The Collaboration,” a film adaptation of the Broadway play he directed about the complicated friendship between Andy Warhol (Paul Bettany, “Avengers”) and fellow artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (Jeremy Pope, “The Inspection”). The film marks Kwei-Armah’s feature directorial debut. Scenes were shot on the sound stages at the Marina Bay studio last fall. The movie is still in post-production and is expected to be released later this summer.

Late last year, Liam Neeson also filmed the crime thriller “Thug,” at Marina Studios in Quincy. The “Taken” actor plays an aging gangster attempting to reconnect with his children. Scenes were shot in Allston, the North End, Winthrop, and on campus at Northeastern University. Ron Perlman (“Don’t Look Up”), Yolonda Ross (“The Chi”), and Daniel Diemer (“The Midnight Club”) co-star. Milton’s Tom Kemp is also listed in a supporting role. Hans Petter Moland (“Cold Pursuit”) directs from a script written by Tony Gayton, creator of “Hell on Wheels.” “Thug” is Neeson’s second Massachusetts-shot crime thriller. In 2018, he filmed “Honest Thief” in Worcester. That movie can be viewed on Prime Video.

This is not the first time the Charles Stuart murder case has been the subject of a movie. The made-for-TV movie “Goodnight Sweet Wife: A Murder in Boston” hit the small screen in 1990, with Ken Olin as Charles and Annabella Price as Carol.

We have not heard when cameras are expected to roll on “Mission Hill.” With the Writers Guild of America on strike, production on most upcoming TV and movie projects is effectively shut down. Also, SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, and the Directors Guild of America are both important guilds about to go into negotiations, which could result in longer production delays.