Despite the success of Hollywood movies focused on African-American figures Malcolm X, Ray Charles, and, most recently, Jackie Robinson and James Brown, it took the work of a relatively unknown female director (Ava DuVernay), a British actor (David Oyelowo), and Oprah Winfrey to make a Martin Luther King Jr. biopic finally happen. Selma chronicles the Nobel Prize-winning civil rights leader during three intense months in 1965, from the ''Bloody Sunday'' assault on protesters to the historic march through Alabama that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. The film will have an Academy run in December before rolling out nationwide by MLK weekend in January, just in time for the 50th anniversary of the events it depicts. ''My vision was surrounding King with the band of brothers and sisters that got him to where he was,'' says DuVernay, who won the Best Director prize at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival for her second feature, Middle of Nowhere, starring Oyelowo. ''You see King's vulnerability, you see when he gets angry, you see the complexity. But part of the complexity is he didn't do it alone. This is a film that shows a black community that activated a nation to come together behind what was right.''