The Man is a 1972 American political drama film directed by Joseph Sargent and starring James Earl Jones. Jones plays Douglass Dilman, the President pro tempore of the United States Senate, who succeeds to the presidency through a series of unforeseeable events, thereby becoming both the first African-American president and the first wholly unelected one. The screenplay, written by Rod Serling, is largely based upon The Man, a novel by Irving Wallace. In addition to being the first black president more than thirty-six years before the real-world occurrence, the fictional Dilman was also the first president elected to neither that office nor to the Vice Presidency, foreshadowing the real-world elevation of Gerald Ford by less than twenty-five months.

Joseph Sargent was an American film director. Though he directed many television movies, his best known feature-length works were arguably the action movie White Lightning starring Burt Reynolds, the biopic MacArthur starring Gregory Peck, and the horror anthology Nightmares. His most popular feature film was the subway thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Sargent won four Emmy Awards over his career.