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As AfroTech just told you, Jordan Peele’s “Nope” had a stellar debut at the box office, earning $44 million in ticket sales. Peele and co-stars Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya have been receiving their flowers, even well before the film’s release. However, we should also highlight the hidden figures who helped bring the film to life. Detroit native Robert McTyre Jr. worked on the film as a lighting technician. Looking at where he was just over a decade ago, McTyre might not have believed he would be a part of a multi-million dollar project.
Beats By Dre and movie producer Charles D. King’s MACRO company have joined forces to help students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in Atlanta pursue their Hollywood film dreams. According to a press release shared with AfroTech, the two companies have partnered together on a film pitch competition that will grant current students and recent alumni of four Atlanta HBCUs the chance to pitch their film passion projects to top Hollywood executives. Winners of the competition will then get the opportunity to attend the Beats Black Creators Summit later this year and The 2022 MACRO Lodge at Sundance Film Festival in January 2022. Eligible students who will be considered for the pitch competition must be at least 18-years-old and matriculate from either Morehouse College, Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University or Morris Brown College. At a time where representation in the film industry is key to advancing the conversation around diversity and inclusion in...
Shola Ajewole has been appointed the Senior Vice President of Creative and Cultural Diversity at FX. In this newly-created role, Ajewole will spearhead the company’s diversity and inclusion efforts via cultivating relationships and content material, assisting expertise to reach initiatives, and working with Disney General Entertainment Content’s diversity, equity and inclusion team, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Ajewole joined FX in 2016 and served as their enterprise affairs lawyer overseeing deals for scripted, unscripted, and animated series and fostering partnerships between FX and Walt Disney TV divisions. He has served as VP of enterprise and authorized affairs at Fox 21 TV Studi Ajewole says he’s honored to continue to uphold FX’s commitment to empowering a variety of voices and his own career dedication to diversity and inclusion. “I’m honored to take this new role and excited to work with John Landgraf, Eric Schrier and the rest of my colleagues to help FX build on...
Chasing your dreams is no easy task, but when you’re determined to beat the odds nothing can stand in your way. Take it from Angela Marie Hutchinson — producer, casting director, scriptwriter, and media entrepreneur of her own entertainment empire. For over ten years, Hutchinson fought to get her screenplay “Hollywood Chaos” funded and produced, but her efforts were of no avail. Fed up with rejection after rejection, she took matters into her own hands and found the means to produce the feature film herself. The film was also successfully picked up by Hulu. “Sometimes we feel like it’s bad to quit so we keep on going. We keep receiving the rejection thinking that eventually a yes will come along. And that’s just not the case. Sometimes the yes will never come until you create it. You have to do something different than what you were doing before,” Hutchinson said, according to Black Enterprise. No longer operating on the scale of getting rejected, Hutchinson created the opportunity...
From the late 90s and throughout the 2000s, Director X has made himself a household name in the music video game. Videos from some of your favorite artists such as Jay-Z, Aaliyah, Chris Brown, Drake, and many more have all received the Director X stamp. He’s become an icon for his skills behind the camera, but also for his conscious effort to break the racial stereotypes in Hollywood and highlighting Black women of all shades. The well-established director is now switching gears and bringing his expertise to film to debut his new short film titled, “Black Love Is, ” a documentary that explores the nuanced view and expression of Black Love. The short film, in partnership with Tinder , features detailed first-person accounts that reflect on Black people and their romantic relationships. Each person they spoke with for the film had their own unique experiences to share, speaking to the depth behind “Black Love Is .” The inspiration behind this short film comes from Director X’s desire...
This article was originally published on 05/17/2019 For his entire career, Stanley Nelson has told some of the Black community’s most important stories. From chronicling the murder of Emmett Till to outlining the history of HBCU’s, Nelson has given the world a window into some of America’s most iconic moments, giving voice and historical context to African Americans’ role in them. Now, Nelson is giving us a look at another aspect of Black life, one that has shaped the African American experience in a way few really understand. In his new documentary, Boss: The Black Experience in Business, Nelson chronicles the contributions, successes, and inequalities that have followed African Americans as we’ve tried to pave our own way to success in an economy that wasn’t built for us to succeed. Through rarely seen photos and video, Nelson takes audiences through a journey of the first black entrepreneurs and how they bravely staked their claim in American life — and how that success and...
Legendary Pictures is bringing Image Comics’ 1920s fantasy action series Bitter Root to the big screen. As Deadline reports, the film will be based on the comic series by David F. Walker, Sanford Greene and Chuck Brown and features the Sangeryes family, a Black family of monster hunters during the Harlem Renaissance in 1924. They are the only defense against a horde of monsters set to invade New York City. These monsters feed off of many of America’s ills like bigotry and discrimination. The family has splintered over the years, and now the remaining members must unite to save the city. Walker, Green and Brown will executive produce with Sean Owolo from Big Machine. Legendary’s Jon Silk and Disney Hall will oversee. Combined with the news of Sebastian A. Jones’ Asunda and Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed getting development deals, it would seem there’s a sea change happening within Hollywood. We see more and more boundary-pushing projects getting greenlit. It makes sense that the...