Dustin Lance Black will team up with the American Broadcasting Company to create a mini-series based on his own life, The Hollywood Reporter writes. After receiving an Oscar for writing Milk, the biopic of San Francisco politician and gay rights activist Harvey Milk, Dustin Lance Black will write and produce a new project focusing on his own life story.

The show will consist of eight episodes focusing on the gay rights struggle, certainly a hot topic in the US following the Supreme Court's decision last June to invalidate the Defense of Marriage Act. The 1996 law defined marriage as the union between a man and a woman.

The currently untitled mini-series will be directly inspired by Dustin Lance Black's own experience. At age 39, the author, born into a Mormon family, is seen as a pillar of contemporary gay rights activism. The screenwriter translated his commitment to gay rights in films such as Milk and 8 (focusing on California's famous Proposition 8). Also, though in a different vein, the author's contribution to J. Edgar did not shy away from exploring the question of the FBI director's suspected homosexuality.