Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman Gets Late Summer Release Date
Photos by Jason Kempin/Getty, John Sciulli/Getty, Jason Merritt/GettySpike Lee’s newest film BlacKkKlansman officially has a release date. Focus Features announced the film, starring John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier and Topher Grace, will open on Aug. 10.
The film follows the real-life story of Ron Stallworth, who became the first African-American police officer in Colorado Springs to go undercover and successfully infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan. Detective Stallworth (Washington) and his partner Flip Zimmerman (Driver) breach the highest levels of the KKK to prevent the racist group from overtaking the city.
Sean McKittrick and Raymond Mansfield for QC Entertainment, Jason Blum for Blumhouse, Jordan Peele for Monkeypaw, Spike Lee and Shaun Redick all serve as producers on the film, while QC’s Edward H. Hamm Jr. serves as executive producer.
Lee was awarded an honorary Oscar in 2015 for his contributions to cinema. His career spans over 30 years, and includes Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay for Do The Right Thing and for Best Documentary Feature for 4 Little Girls.
Washington is the son of two-time Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington. He is best known for his role on the HBO show Ballers, starring Dwayne Johnson. Driver is best known for his role as Kylo Ren in the most recent Star Wars franchise. He also starred in the Emmy-winning HBO comedy series Girls with Lena Dunham, Martin Scorsese’s Silence, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and last year’s Logan Lucky, among many others. The Emmy nominee will star in the forthcoming The Torture Report with Annette Benning and Jon Hamm, and an untitled Noah Baumbach project with Scarlett Johansson, Laura Dern and Greta Gerwig.
Harrier is best known for starring in One Life to Live and most recently, in the box office smash Spider-Man: Homecoming. Grace is best known for his work on That ‘70s Show but has starred in a wide range of films, including Interstellar, Mona Lisa Smile, Spiderman 3, Predators and more. The actor can also be seen in the forthcoming Under the Silver Lake with Andrew Garfield, and the faith-based The Impossible with Chrissy Metz.
Focus Features is the distribution company behind niche genre and award-winning films including Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Brokeback Mountain, Phantom Thread and more. The company will distribute the forthcoming Jason Reitman comedy starring Charlize Theron, Tully, as well as the Mr. Rogers documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor, the Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie starrer Mary Queen of Scots, Boy Erased with Lucas Hedges, Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman, and On the Basis of Sex with Armie Hammer and Felicity Jones, about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.