John Ridley Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

“There is nothing else to do for them except to them make them comfortable.” So says Vera Farmiga’s Dr. Anna Pou in the first trailer for Apple TV’s Hurricane Katrina drama Five Days At Memorial.

We are becoming part machine.

As award-winning directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss prepared to shoot their new documentary Girls State, they had no way of knowing real-world events would intrude upon the production in a major way. Nor, of course, did their protagonists.

A former ABC director of development is taking the network, parent company Disney and John Ridley to court for gender, racial and economic discrimination, claiming they firing her when she complained about the alleged situation.

Oscar winner John Ridley has some choice words for Nelson Peltz, the activist investor who’s trying to land two seats on the board of the Walt Disney Co.

What’s the biggest documentary festival in the world? The International Documentary Festival Amsterdam. For now.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic At a glance, Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 campaign for president was the definition of quixotic. She was 47 years old; at the time, she had served only one term (starting in 1968) as the first Black woman to be elected to Congress. (Her district centered on the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.) To say that Chisholm wasn’t a seasoned Washington, D.C., player would be putting it mildly, and she looked the part of the outsider.

Many may not know the name Shirley Chisholm, but it is not for lack of Hollywood trying to keep her flame alive. The seven-term Brooklyn congresswoman, who became the first African American woman elected to Congress when she won in 1968, also became the first woman and first African American to seek the nomination for President of either major party when she ran for the Democratic nomination in 1972. She defined the word “trailblazer” and her story is indeed inspiring, if also frustrating for all the obstacles she had to overcome in a male-dominated business of governing. Uzo Aduba won an Emmy for her supporting role as Chisholm the 2020 limited series Mrs. America, even as the series itself was focused on conservative gadfly Phyllis Schaffly played by Cate Blanchett. That series touched on the 1972 campaign and thus Chisholm as well, but now, after 15 years of trying, Regina King has realized a longtime goal of doing a movie solely focused on Chisholm. In addition to playing the title role, King is also a producer, probably facing the same stiff odds bringing Chisholm’s life to the screen that her subject faced in Congress, where she introduced more than 50 pieces of legislation during her career and truly made a difference.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor As a proud Brooklynite, composer Tamar-kali will often walk around her neighborhood and see a mural of America’s first Black congresswoman Shirley Chisholm. Other times, she’ll take a walk around the Shirley Chisholm State Park and be reminded of an incredible legacy. Chisholm’s story is the subject of “Shirley,” a new film produced by and starring Regina King, directed by John Ridley and coming to Netflix on March 22.

Steven J. Horowitz Senior Music Writer Samara Joy has taken a detour from jazz with her new song “Why I’m Here,” featured as part of the upcoming Netflix film “Shirley” about the first Black congresswoman Shirley Chisholm. Produced by and co-written with PJ Morton, “Why I’m Here” sees the 24-year-old singer straying from her jazz roots, playing as a sweeping, anthemic ode inspired by the politician.

When director Amber Fares came out with her documentary Speed Sisters, about the Middle East’s first all-women race car driving team, the New York Times praised it as “unconventional in form as well as content.”

What turns a historical figure into a legend? Shirley Chisholm defied the odds to become a force in US politics. Netflix’s “Shirley” tells the story of this American icon, showing the private moments that inspired her strength.

Caroline Brew editor “Do I look like every other politician?” Regina King‘s Shirley Chisholm says in response to being told she sounds like every other politician in the trailer for “Shirley.” Out March 22, the Netflix film tells the story of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress, and chronicles her trailblazing 1972 presidential campaign. The movie is written and directed by John Ridley, who won an Oscar for penning “12 Years a Slave.” King leads the cast, which is rounded out by Lance Reddick, Lucas Hedges, Terrence Howard, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Christina Jackson, Michael Cherrie, Dorian Crossmond Missick, Amirah Vann, W.

Netflix did its annual blitz, a big dog and pony show for the press last night, revealing its entire film slate for 2024.  Most of the heavy hitters you already know, like Zack Snyder’s “Rebel Moon: Part 2 – The Scargiver,” which we already know, comes out in April, or “Beverley Hills Cop: Axel Foley,” or John Ridley’s “Shirley,” or Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man,” recently announced for a June release, but there’s plenty of surprises and new confirmations too.

The Church of Satan would like to make it clear that members don’t worship the Devil, nor do they believe Satan is real. What they do believe in, and the rituals they practice, emerge in the documentary Realm of Satan, which just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. 

When the Oscar shortlist of feature documentaries was announced in December, it was dominated by films that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival – films like Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, The Eternal Memory, Beyond Utopia and A Still Small Voice. 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe hit what was viewed as something of a stumbling block with the release of Eternals in 2021.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director News broke in 2015 that John Ridley, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “12 Years of Slave,” was joining the Marvel family to develop a mystery superhero project for ABC. The network was already home to Marvel’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D” at the time, and a spinoff series had just been announced prior to the Ridley news. Ridley was already a favorite at the network thanks to the acclaim for his anthology series “American Crime.” Suffice to say, Ridley’s Marvel project never happened.

It’s safe to say that Chloe Zhao‘s “Eternals” was not the massive critical success Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios expected it to be. But would an “Eternals” TV show fared any better? Screenwriter and TV director John Ridley thinks so.

John Legend and his partners at Get Lifted Film Co. are bringing some uplift to audiences with their inspiring new HBO documentary Stand Up & Shout: Songs From a Philly High School. 

Bad Press, King Coal, Joonam and Fantastic Machine are all award-winning documentaries, yet in the race for Oscar recognition, they’re underdogs. Despite the many honors they have collected at festivals around the world, each of these exceptional films has struggled to land distribution, complicating efforts to get attention from Academy voters (on Monday, King Coal did lock down a deal with American Documentary for broadcast next year on POV). 

EXCLUSIVE: American Documentary has acquired Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s award-winning documentary King Coal for the upcoming season of POV, the longest-running nonfiction series on television.

In a sense, Central Appalachia is as threatened by climate change as much as any other place on Earth.

North Korea. Your house is on fire. What do you try to rescue first? Your kids? Your pet? No, the first thing you reach for is the portrait of the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-un and his father and grandfather that is hanging on your wall, as mandated by the authoritarian government. Everything else can wait. 

Documentary filmmaking legend Errol Morris has built his extraordinary reputation on two principle foundations: what might be called dramatizations (he rejects the terms reenactments or recreations) and interviews of incredible insight and verve. He has conversed with a fascinating array of people — Robert McNamara, Donald Rumsfeld, Steve Bannon, owners of pet cemeteries, a woman accused of kidnapping and raping a Mormon missionary, to name a few.

EXCLUSIVE: British actress Sophia Brown has signed with Anonymous Content.

John Chau’s death in 2018 made headlines around the world: an evangelical young man killed on an island in the Andaman Sea inhabited by an isolated Indigenous group. Chau came to North Sentinel Island bearing a waterproof Bible and dreams of converting the North Sentinelese to Christianity, but his ill-fated mission ended in a hail of sharpened arrows. 

Sean Penn, director of the new Ukraine war documentary Superpower, does not hold back in an in-depth interview for Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast.  

There’s a crisis at the border: migrants stranded in desperate conditions, steel and barbed wire barriers thrown in their path. 

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…,” Charles Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities. The same phrase could describe the state of the documentary industry. 

Welcome to the premiere episode of Doc Talk, our new podcast hosted by Oscar-winning writer-director John Ridley and Deadline’s documentary editor Matt Carey. We’re kicking off with a deep dive into a signature power of documentary: The capacity to right a grave wrong in the criminal justice system by freeing a wrongfully convicted prisoner. Only a handful of major nonfiction filmmakers has achieved this extraordinary feat, springing men and women who faced Death Row or life sentences.

Despite the wall-to-wall coverage of Hurricane Katrina, there wasn’t a lot of archival footage of some of the more devastating moments that producers wanted to depict in Five Days of Memorial — like when the roof came off the Superdome and the 9th Ward flooding. So VFX Supervisor Eric Durst (Snowpiercer, Perry Mason) said his team went back “forensically” to research those moments before depicting them in the Apple TV limited series.

Despite the wall-to-wall coverage of Hurricane Katrina, there wasn’t a lot of archival footage of some of the more devastating moments that producers wanted to depict in Five Days of Memorial — like when the roof came off the Superdome and the 9th Ward flooding. So VFX Supervisor Eric Durst (Snowpiercer, Perry Mason) said his team went back “forensically” to research those moments before depicting them in the Apple TV limited series.

Editor’s note: Marcus Ryder is a veteran UK and international news journalist and editor, academic and executive. He is among the most-respected figures working in British media diversity and his campaigning work as the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity has been influential throughout British entertainment circles. Yesterday, he was named CEO of the Film and TV Charity. Like our recent guest columnist John Ridley, Ryder harbors concerns companies are turning their backs on anti-racism and diversity pledges made since the death of George Floyd but here he argues the issues date back much further than that.

John Ridley is the Oscar-winning 12 Years A Slave writer, writer/director of Five Days At Memorial, and the Eisner-nominated writer of the DC Graphic novel series GCPD: The Blue Wall, which premieres in September about systemic injustice in the Gotham City PD. He’s been working in Hollywood long enough to witness the the ebbs and flows of diversity initiatives, and he fears the inclusion momentum that came after the death of George Floyd and opened opportunities to new filmmakers, could well turn into a forgotten fad as the urgency fades.

Jonnie Davis is leaving ABC Signature.

EXCLUSIVE: Veteran TV executive and producer Michael McDonald (American Crime) is finalizing a deal to join Amazon Studios’ executive ranks as Head of the Comedy and Drama Development team in the US SVOD TV Development and Series – Wholly Owned division led by Nick Pepper, I hear. He will oversee development of all wholly owned comedy and drama series. Amazon Studios declined comment.