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OK, now here’s some programming to get excited about, for Black people especially.
The first trailer has dropped for American Fiction, a film based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett, directed by Cord Jefferson and starring Tracee Ellis Ross, Erika Alexander, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown, and arguably the most criminally underrated Black actor in Hollywood history, Jeffrey Wright. (Seriously, watch him in Shaft, Boardwalk Empire, Westworld and Cadillac Records, and tell me this man’s trophy shelf shouldn’t be collapsing under the weight of all of his Oscars and Emmys.)
In the film, which won The People’s Choice Award at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, according to Variety, Wright plays Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a struggling writer who takes on (or takes advantage of) a system that profits off of Black stereotypes.
“AMERICAN FICTION is Cord Jefferson’s hilarious directorial debut, which confronts our culture’s obsession with reducing people to outrageous stereotypes. Jeffrey Wright stars as Monk, a frustrated novelist who’s fed up with the establishment profiting from ‘Black’ entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes,” reads the film’s description. “To prove his point, Monk uses a pen name to write an outlandish ‘Black’ book of his own, a book that propels him to the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.”
It almost sounds like a version of Robert Townsend’s 1987 film Hollywood Shuffle but for the equally racist literary world.
American Fiction will be released in select theaters through MGM and Orion on Dec. 15, with a wide release on Dec. 22. You can watch the trailer below.
Yeah, this looks like a very necessary film and hopefully, it results in a racial awakening in the entertainment world and Jeffrey Write finally getting all the flowers he deserves.
So, what do y’all think? Are you excited about American Fiction? Let us know in the comments.
