‘I Expected a Bidding War. We Did Not Get That.’
Shaka King’s new film, Judas and the Black Messiah, is both a prestige picture and a pulpy thriller. It’s a biographical portrait of the Illinois Black Panther chairman Fred Hampton (played by Daniel Kaluuya), who by the age of 21 had become a major figure in the national party and founded the Rainbow Coalition movement. But much of the movie’s focus is on William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield): the informant who was planted in Hampton’s organization by the FBI, became his head of security, and ultimately betrayed him, passing along information that led to Hampton’s killing by Chicago police in 1969.
King’s background as a filmmaker before Judas and the Black Messiah was largely in comedy (including his excellent debut feature, Newlyweeds), and he blends genres masterfully. The new film thoughtfully illustrates Hampton’s efforts at community organizing while weaving in the tension of O’Neal’s role as a double agent, a plot point that feels straight out of crime epics like The Departed. The movie premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and will be released simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max on February 12; it figures to be a major Oscar player due to the Academy’s extended awards calendar this year.
Despite the story’s real-life resonance, the big stars, and the fact that Judas is produced by the Black Panther director Ryan Coogler, King struggled to find funding for the movie before landing with Warner Bros. He talked to The Atlantic about Hollywood’s ongoing skepticism toward adult dramas and films focused on Black characters, the frequently flawed representations of the Black Panthers onscreen, and the trickiness of theatrical releases during the pandemic. This interview has been edited for clarity.
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