Talented multi-hyphenate Director/Actor/Writer/Producer Willmott (also a professor of film and media studies at the University of Kansas), fresh off his co-writing credit on Spike Lee’s Chi-raq, has made a name for himself as a smart, innovative auteur crafting challenging, timely and powerful stories in award-winning films such as CSA: The Confederate States of America, The Only Good Indian and The Battle for Bunker Hill. DESTINATION: PLANET NEGRO!
blends humor and social commentary in an uproarious, thought-provoking satire and, on June 10, Candy Factory Films will release this acclaimed film to VOD & Digital HD on all leading platforms.
One part ’50s Goofball, Time-Traveling Sci-Fi, One Part Trenchant
Social Commentary, Writer/Director/Star Kevin Willmott Takes Audiences
on an Unforgettable, Campy and Hilarious Journey, Also Starring
Empire’s Trai Byers and Wes Studi
AVAILABLE VIA VOD AND DIGITAL HD ON JUNE 10
ON ALL LEADING DIGITAL PLATFORMS
This June, join Candy Factory Films for an acclaimed, satirical sci-fi adventure with DESTINATION: PLANET NEGRO! Written, directed and starring Kevin Willmott, co-writer of Spike Lee’s Chi-raq and director of the award-winning mockumentary CSA: The Confederate States of America, this smart spoof turns history on its head as ’30s Jim Crow laws force African Americans to leave Earth and colonize Mars. Winner of a Special Jury Prize at Dallas Videofest, DESTINATION: PLANET NEGRO! will be available via VOD and digital HD on all leading digital platforms on June 10, 2016.
It’s 1939 and black leaders W.E.B. DuBois and George Washington Carver decide that segregated America is no place for African Americans, so they devise a secret plot to solve the “Negro Problem” by way of a rocket ship to Mars. Carrying an improbable crew of three, the spacecraft vaults into a time warp, landing its brave scientist-astronauts in modern day Kansas City. And, though the astonished explorers discover developments like young men with drooping pants and the election of a black president, DESTINATION: PLANET NEGRO! reveals that things may not have changed as much as we think they have.
Featuring a talented ensemble cast which The Chicago Tribune called “a cunning group of actors expert at deploying side-eye reactions and deadpan one-liners”, the film stars Willmott as Dr. Warrington Avery, Trai Byers (“Empire”, Selma, “90210”) as B-12, Tosin Morohunfola (The Association, “Chicago Med”) as Dr. Race Johnson and Danielle Cooper as Beneatha Avery. Co-stars include Wes Studi (“Penny Dreadful”, A Million Ways to Die in the West) and Walter Coppage (Jayhawkers, The Association).
