FIRST TRAILER FOR SMALL AXE DROPS: The BBC has dropped the first trailer for Steve McQueen‘s Small Axe anthology, marking the 50th anniversary of London’s Mangrove protest, when Black people demonstrated against police bullying. Black Panther star Letitia Wright leads with Shaun Parkes (Lost in Space), Malachi Kirby (Curfew), Rochenda Sandall (Line of Duty) and Jack Lowden (The Long Song) also starring.
MOONDIAL GETS BBC TREATMENT: Fulwell 73 has snagged the rights to turn Helen Creswell’s YA novel Moondial into a time travel drama. Matt Lopez, behind the Nicolas Cage starrer The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Dwayne Johnson‘s Race To Witch Mountain, has been recruited to write the story, which follows a teen girl who discovers a portal through time.
JUDAS DIRECTOR DEFENDS CASTING: Judas and the Black Messiah writer and director Shaka King is defending his decision to cast Daniel Kaluuha as Fred Hampton, an American civil rights leader who headed p the Black Panther Party. Lakeith Stanfield is playing William O’Neal, the FBI informant who infiltrated the group. “I’m well aware of the debate around British actors playing American Black, iconic figures,” King said during a virtual panel attended by Variety. “But I was born in America, my family is Caribbean and I have a South African name so I am, literally, emblematic of a diasporic way of thinking. Kidnapped Africans ended up all around the world. We have a lot more in common than people think, in terms of our experience and trying to overthrow white supremacy.”
AMAZON‘S A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN TO LEAN HARD INTO SEXUALITY, RACE: The co-creators of Amazon‘s A League of Their Own, Will Graham and Abbie Jacobson (who also star in the show) talk to The Hollywood Reporter about going well beyond Penny Marshall‘s vision for the original film. “This series is going to tell the story of inclusion, but it's also going to tell the story of exclusion and what happens when that magic door doesn't open for you — how do you have to find another way to do the thing that you love,” Graham says. “Our goal is to tell those stories authentically and realistically with heart, real emotion, humor, joy and all the things that Penny brought to the movie — and with an eye on the world today because so much of what they went through is very much what women, queer women and women of color are still going through today. The whole goal is to be authentic and real to their experiences. But the queer stories are a big part of what ties the different parts of the show together. This is a big American story that also very much happens to be about queer women and Black women. It'll be exciting for folks to get a window into what these women's lives were like,” Graham adds.