Documentary filmmaker Robert Griffith of Moon is excited about his latest project. With a subject that has broad resonance and a major film star as the narrator, “The Judge: Character, Cases, and Courage” has already received an offer from an international film distributor. Griffith said attorneys are in negotiations, and he hopes to know something soon.

“The Judge” is the story of Judge Robert R. Merhige Jr., who served in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia from 1967 to 1998 and handled some of the greatest landmark decisions of his time. Among those decisions were orders for dozens of Virginia public schools to desegregate, including ordering some of the school systems to bus their students to achieve desegregation.

Merhige also ordered the University of Virginia to admit women, heard the Dalkon Shield litigation when A.H. Robins Company was the subject of a class action suit regarding the birth control device, and presided over the case agai...