Coming out this week from Universal Pictures is the independent romance drama “Queen & Slim,” written by Emmy Award winner Lena Waithe and starring Academy Award nominee Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out) and introducing Jodie Turner-Smith.
From Melina Matsoukas, the visionary director of some of this generation’s most powerful pop-culture experiences, including Beyonce’s “Formation” and the Nike “Equality” campaign, comes Makeready’s unflinching new drama, Queen & Slim.
While on a forgettable first date together in Ohio, a black man (Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya) and a black woman (Jodie Turner-Smith, in her first starring feature-film role), are pulled over for a minor traffic infraction. The situation escalates, with sudden and tragic results, when the man kills the police officer in self-defense. Terrified and in fear for their lives, the man, a retail employee, and the woman, a criminal defense lawyer, are forced to go on the run. But the incident is captured on video and goes viral, and the couple unwittingly become a symbol of trauma, terror, grief and pain for people across the country.
As they drive, these two unlikely fugitives will discover themselves and each other in the most dire and desperate of circumstances, and will forge a deep and powerful love that will reveal their shared humanity and shape the rest of their lives.
Best known for starring in the Netflix comedy-drama series Master of None, which her an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series in 2017 for writing the show’s “Thanksgiving” episode, Waithe is also the creator of the 2018 Showtime drama series The Chi.
For Queen & Slim, Waithe wrote the script based on an original idea by bestselling author James Frey (A Million Little Pieces, Katerina).
Blackfilm.com recently sat down with Waithe as she talked about the film came about bringing on Melina Matsoukas to direct and Daniel Kaluuya to star in it.
Screenwriter Lena Waithe On Bringing Queen & Slim To The Screen
Loading…