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Hollywood Calls Our Bluff, Is Finally Making A Harriet Tubman Biopic

This article is more than 5 years old.

Focus Features dropped a bombshell about two hours ago. We are now officially, at long last, getting a biopic centered on Harriet Tubman. The absence of a major movie about the famous abolitionist (or any big-screen portrayals, save for, uh, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), has been (understandably) something of a sticking point. It's a sign of an industry that would rather spend money on movies about vaguely important white dudes (or historically interesting white women) than offer up a movie about one of the most famous black people in the slavery/Civil War era. I am not going to turn this into a Wikipedia entry, as I’m assuming that folks clicking on this know why Tubman (pre-Civil War abolitionist and wartime Union spy) “deserves” the movie treatment.

The film, Harriet, will be directed by Kasi Lemmons (Eve's Bayou, The Caveman's Valentine, Talk to Me and Black Nativity) and produced by Debra Martin Chase, Gregory Allen Howard and Daniel Taplin Lundberg. It will come from a screenplay Lemons co-wrote with Gregory Allen Howard (Ali, Remember the Titans). Cynthia Erivo (next seen in Fox’s Widows) will play the title role, and I’ll avoid making any Scarlett Johansson jokes. Joining Erivo is Leslie Odom Jr., Joe Alwyn, Jennifer Nettles and Clarke Peters. I can’t speak to the release date, but I’m betting either Fall 2019 or Fall 2020. This flick has “Oscars!” written all over it, especially if it turns out to be good.

The question, as always, is whether moviegoers will show up in theaters. Generally speaking, audiences have been good about supporting explicitly diverse movies (big flicks centering on an ensemble that isn’t Caucasian, often in a narrative that is very much rooted in the specific demographics) even as I am annoyed at their unwillingness to support movies that are more casually inclusive (general studio programmer movies that just happened to feature “not a white guy” leads or ensembles). They’ll show up for Walt Disney’s Black Panther but not Walt Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time. They’ll ignore Amandla Stenberg’s The Darkest Mind (directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson no less) but presumably flock to Stenberg’s The Hate U Give.

Sorry, I’ll stop complaining about that now, especially as John Cho’s dynamite Searching has already earned $32 million worldwide. Nonetheless, unless it runs into a similar perfect storm of doomed that bedeviled Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation (mixed reviews, a pre-release rape scandal that killed its Oscar hopes, issues with how it treated its female characters, the more commercial Magnificent Seven poaching much of its target audience, etc.), Harriet should be one of those “put up or shut up” moments where folks actually put up and show up. It’s not a direct comparison, but Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman (also distributed by Focus Features domestically and Universal/Comcast overseas) has earned $66m worldwide on a $15m budget.

Fair or not, a big-budget Harriet Tubman biopic has been an arguable holy grail for those wanting more diverse representation in mainstream cinema, especially in the realm of “very important people” biopics. Focus Features is announcing that they will give us what we claim to want. To paraphrase Robocop, I'll buy that for $20. Presuming it turns out well, and I offer Lemmons and company my full support to not be 100% historically accurate in the name of making an entertaining and exciting film that people will want to see beyond its mere educational value, I will presume that it’ll be at least a modest hit. Even if it’s lousy, there’s always Underground.

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