Leading actors Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield will deliver stirring performances in an upcoming cinematic retelling of the life and assassination of Black Panther Fred Hampton, if a newly released trailer for the movie is any indication.
On Thursday Warner Brothers shared a trailer for the film, Judas and the Black Messiah, which is produced by Ryan Coogler and depicts the events leading up to Hampton being killed in a hail of bullets at home by police in Chicago in 1969.
BAFTA award winner Daniel Kaluuya stars as the Black revolutionary alongside Lakeith Stanfield, who plays the role of FBI informant William O’Neal, who helped engineer the assassination.
But enough preamble; the trailer sells the movie better than any written description:
In the trailer, a pulsing drumbeat establishes the stakes while Kaluuya delivers speeches as the Black Panther Party Chairman and declares, “You can murder a revolutionary, but you can’t murder a revolution. You can murder a freedom fighter, but you can’t murder freedom.”
Kaluuya and Stanfield worked together in 2017’s Get Out, while Ryan Coogler has established his chops in telling stories where Black people are centered with the critically-acclaimed Fruitvale Station, the Creed movies, and even MCU’s Black Panther.
Judas and the Black Messiah will be the first studio film for director Shaka King, reports the Hollywood Reporter, and is scheduled to premiere in theaters in 2021.
Hopefully, we’ll be able to actually (and safely) enjoy movies in theatres again by then. Either way, we’ll definitely be watching this one.
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DISCUSSION
Imma be that dude. So are they just going to get Daniel Kaluuya and John Boyega and Chiwetel Ejiofor and Idris Elba to play all of our African Americans historical figures and tell all of our stories?