‘American Fiction’ Filmmaker Cord Jefferson Teases New Erotic Thriller Movie – DGA Awards

A major awards show on a Saturday night is a rare occurrence, but the 2024 SAG Awards are here to shake up awards season a little bit!

Prior to American Fiction, Sterling K. Brown was best known as Randall Pearson in the long-running, award-winning NBC family drama series This is Us. The part that director Cord Jefferson was offering him couldn’t have been more different: in Jefferson’s adaptation of the satirical novel by Percival Everett, Brown plays Clifford ‘Cliff’ Ellison, a caustic plastic surgeon and brother to the film’s protagonist, Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison (Jeffrey Wright). After divorcing his wife, Cliff comes out as gay, further estranging him from his uptight family. This nuanced role allowed Brown to explore the many facets of Blackness and the challenges of the LGBTQ+ community.

A column chronicling conversations and events on the awards circuit.

Todd Gilchrist editor The creative process can sometimes be highly organized, and others completely ephemeral: for every story that’s been mapped out beat by beat there’s another that arrived completely intact from a writer’s fingers in a feverish outpouring of inspiration. Somewhere in between these extremes is the unglamorous, frequently tedious work of chipping away at an idea, a sequence, or line of dialogue that gets to the heart of what a scribe wants to say — or more precisely, hopes to communicate.

Murtada Elfadl Within his deal at Netflix, Tyler Perry has found room to flex his narrative muscles, mixing his familiar brand of comedy and melodrama with other genres. “A Jazzman’s Blues” applied Perry’s usual formula to a 1930s period setting. Before that, his first film for the streamer, “A Fall from Grace,” found him trying his hand at a legal thriller.

Can you even hear a guild awards ceremony if it occurs after the Academy Awards? Thanks to the WGA strike, we’re about to find out. The nominees were announced this morning for the 2024 WGA Awards which will take place on April 14.

I share my colleague Pete Hammond’s fascination with Cord Jefferson’s BAFTA win for his screenplay adaptation, American Fiction. It is no small thing for a self-consciously American story to win a very British award against competition as formidable as Christopher Nolan, especially for a debut film.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor With just four days remaining until final Oscar voting officially opens, the race has taken a few unexpected turns at the BAFTA Awards. Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” a biographical drama about the father of the atomic bomb, has continued to surge ahead after seven wins, including best film and director. Its trajectory towards a triumphant night on the Dolby Theatre stage on March 10 seems assured.

After eight straight years of the BAFTA and Oscars failing to match on their choice for Best Picture, you can probably take it to the bank that this year that streak will be broken as Oppenheimer continues its flawless roll toward the Academy Awards and now adding seven wins at BAFTA including the big prize to its previous triumphs at the Golden Globes, Critics Choice, and DGA awards. It is all going according to plan.

Jenelle Riley Deputy Awards and Features Editor When you have the SAG Award nominated ensemble of “American Fiction” – John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Tracee Ellis Ross and Jeffrey Wright (also individually nominated in male lead and Oscar nominated for the film) you have to ask them where it all began. In discussing their first jobs for the union, Ross revealed that, like many actors, she started with a commercial – this one for Infiniti cars.But her co-stars soon revealed surprisingly momentous stories for their first SAG-AFTRA jobs. Wright noted his onscreen debut was opposite Burt Lancaster and Sidney Poitier in the 1991 miniseries “Separate but Equal” about the Brown v.

Sophie Turner is stacking up her work schedule!

American Fiction filmmaker Cord Jefferson and writer John Wells have signed on to Just Cause, Amazon’s upcoming thriller limited series, starring and executive produced by Scarlett Johansson, Deadline has confirmed.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Emmy winner and Oscar nominee Cord Jefferson will write and executive produce the upcoming Scarlett Johansson limited series, which serves as her first major television role. The “American Fiction” filmmaker has boarded the Amazon Prime Video adaptation of John Katzenbach’s novel “Just Cause.” Additionally, acclaimed writer John Wells has joined the project, co-writing the series with Jefferson, and will also serve as an executive producer. “Just Cause,” first published in 1992, tells the story of Matt Cowart, a Miami reporter.

The new Karate Kid movie has found its lead!

Katcy Stephan Ben Wang is the next Karate Kid. Wang, who previously starred opposite Michelle Yeoh in the Disney+ series “American Born Chinese,” landed the sought-after role after a worldwide search that saw thousands of young actors from around the globe vie for the title role in Sony’s new “Karate Kid” movie, which unites Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio. Per studio insiders, Wang delivered a standout audition performance that demonstrated his deep connection to the character.

The Taste Of Things, a meditation on turn-of-the-century French cooking — no chicken wings or nachos in sight — is stirring up a nice weekend for IFC Films with $126k and the best per-theater opening of the year so far on Super Bowl weekend.

On Saturday night, when Martin Scorsese collected a gold medallion—the honor given by the DGA to all five of its Feature Film nominees—he thanked his cast and crew and Apple for their support in making Killers of the Flower Moon, but he emphasized his thanks to the Osage Nation for their intrinsic role in the making of the film and its success.

The annual awards for the guild that settled with the AMPTP while the other two major guilds went on strike and that former guild somehow reaped the same rewards afterward were held tonight and, shockingly, there were few surprises. In perhaps the most expected win of the night “Oppenheimer’s” Christopher Nolan won the Theatrical Film honor, the top prize at the 2024 DGA Awards.

Despite the progress that the guilds made with studios last year, DGA President Lesli Linka Glatter says the fight isn’t over.

Meredith Woerner Deputy Editor, Variety.com Welcoming nominees and guests to the 76th DGA Awards, director, producer and writer Judd Apatow greeted the audience joking, “I’m your host Bradley Cooper in an even more beguiling Jewish nose.” Apatow opened up with a zinger drafting off the DGA’s history of never striking against the studios. He noted that his agents told him to hold out for more money for his fifth time as host of the ceremony: “But in the spirit of the DGA I accepted their first offer.” Taking aim at the current political landscape, Apatow addressed the crowd stating, “I swear to god if this is the only time you vote this year, you can all go fuck yourselves.” He noted the age of the likely nominees for the presidential election, Joe Biden and Donald Trump.