Yesterday, we heard that the trailer for director Tim Story’s horror comedy The Blackening would be arriving online today – and the trailer can now be seen in the embed above! The film is said to take place during a Juneteenth weekend getaway, and Lionsgate is going to give the film a wide theatrical release on June 16th – which happens to be Juneteenth weekend. So take a look at the trailer and see if this looks like a movie you’d like to go see on the big screen in June.
Story directed The Blackening from a screenplay by Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins. Inspired by a Perkins-scripted 3Peat comedy sketch that aired on Comedy Central in 2018, the film is about a group of Black friends who go away for the weekend only to find themselves trapped in a cabin with a killer who forces them to play a game with life-or-death consequences. The idea asks a reasonable question: since it seems that Black characters are usually the earliest victims in horror films, what happens when all the characters are Black?
Perkins (The Upshaws) stars in the film alongside Antoinette Robertson (Dear White People), Sinqua Walls (Shark Night), Grace Byers (Empire), X Mayo (The Farewell), Melvin Gregg (The Way Back), Jermaine Fowler (The Drop), Yvonne Orji (Insecure), Jay Pharoah (Unsane), and James Preston Rogers (Pixels).
Lionsgate’s Jason Constantine has said that The Blackening is “a wildly entertaining horror movie that delivers jump-out-of-your-seat scares while also hilariously subverting the genre.” Story and Oliver produced the film with Marcei A. Brown, Jason Clark, E. Brian Dobbins, and Sharla Sumpter Bridgett. Perkins co-produced, and Vicky Story is associate producer.
Story’s previous directing credits include Barbershop, Taxi, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Hurricane Season, Think Like a Man, Ride Along, Think Like a Man Too, Ride Along 2, Shaft, and Tom & Jerry.
What did you think of the trailer for The Blackening? Will you be watching this movie? Let us know by leaving a comment below. I will definitely be watching The Blackening at some point down the line.