Getting Academy Award nominations is a complicated thing for the makers of “Judas and the Black Messiah”.
Director Shaka King and producers Ryan Coogler and Charles D. King are on the cover of the latest Hollywood Reporter, and in the issue they talk about bringing the story of Fred Hampton and the Black Panther Party to the screen.
Talking about the film’s release directly to streaming on HBO Max in the U.S., Charles says, “Their streaming platform was nascent. They’re not where Netflix and Disney+ are, where we would have had that wide worldwide audience. We’ve delivered a movie that the world will embrace. I wanted that for Shaka and for Ryan, and I wanted it for Chairman Fred Hampton and his family and his legacy. At the end of the day, we understood, business-wise, why they had to make the decision they made.”
As for the film’s multiple Oscar nods, including for Best Picture, Shaka asks, “Why did it take 93 years for there to be three Black producers to be nominated for an Academy Award? Is it because there weren’t three Black people willing to produce movies? Probably not. Was it because we didn’t have the access to the kind of capital to make a big, sweeping studio feature? Maybe a little bit. Was it because we made that stuff and they didn’t recognize it? Maybe a little bit. But none of it feels good. So it’s bittersweet.”
The director also talks about being a Black filmmaker in Hollywood, and his experience pushing the boundaries of the industry.
“I’ve never been the first Black person to do anything,” Shaka says. “For me, having the experiences I’ve had in this business, which are not dissimilar from the experiences my grandfather had as a Black janitor, or my dad had as a Black math teacher … I’ve learned to find satisfaction in ways where I don’t have to rely upon the co-sign of primarily white-led institutions. But a friend pointed out to me the power for those who are coming on the heels of us in seeing three Black men achieve something like this in our industry, and I couldn’t deny that.”
In 2016, Coogler declined the Academy’s invitation to become a member and has remained a non-member ever since, in large part because he doesn’t like to think of art as a competition.
“I don’t buy into ‘this versus that,’ or ‘this movie wasn’t good enough to make this list,'” he explains. “I love movies. … For me, that’s good enough. If I’m going to be a part of organizations, they’re going to be labour unions, where we’re figuring out how to take care of each other’s families and health insurance. But I know that these things bring exposure.”
Coogler also talks with THR about losing his friend and “Black Panther” star Chadwick Boseman just as work on “Judas” was finishing up last year.
“It’s difficult,” he says. “You’ve got to keep going when you lose loved ones. I know Chad wouldn’t have wanted us to stop. He was somebody who was so about the collective…Truthfully. I’d feel him yelling at me, like, ‘What are you doing?’ So, you keep going.”
