“When I saw ‘Monster’ last summer, it felt timelier, more important than ever. We had lots of conversations with them.”Īudrey Gardiner, director of content acquisition at Netflix, was among them. My understanding is that they really took their time to watch the film internally with many people and really think about how they could best bring the film out. “I really like working with Netflix,” Lee said.
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Lee had a relationship with Netflix she produced the “She’s Gotta Have It” series created by her husband, Spike Lee. We saw it at Sundance and we knew from every subsequent screening after that - that not everyone was going to understand this, and yet we knew that audiences would.” The one thing we have known all along is that audiences were going to respond to this material. “But it is a producer’s job at that point to say, ‘Well, that’s not the end. “Sometimes deals don’t happen,” Silver said. After the deal fell through, Lee and Silver took the film to Netflix. Without going into too many details about what really went on, the deal was just not able to fully come together,” Lee said.Īn Entertainment Studios rep declined to comment. Then, after the press releases, the deal fell through. In April 2019, Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios announced it had acquired “Monster,” but with a new title: “All Rise.” This may have been an effort to differentiate it from the 2003 film by Patty Jenkins, but it also had the effect of separating it from the source novel. The muted response may have been tied to a point of confusion in the Sundance 2018 lineup: Washington and Harrison also co-starred in another, similarly titled film, Reinaldo Marcus Green’s “Monsters and Men.” Like “Monster,” Green’s film explores racism in the criminal justice system and its impact on Black communities. John Legend, Nas, and Wright are among the executive producers. The cast includes Jennifer Hudson, Jeffrey Wright, ASAP Rocky, John David Washington, Nas, and Jharrel Jerome. The film is the feature directorial debut of Anthony Mandler, who made his name over the last two decades as a music-video director for artists like Rihanna, Drake, and Beyoncé. 'Cowboy Bebop': Everything You Need to Know About the Live-Action Netflix Adaptation 'RACE: Bubba Wallace' Trailer: Netflix Documentary Confronts Racism in NASCAR 'Downfall: The Case Against Boeing' Review: Bland but Infuriating Netflix Doc Sifts Through the Wreckage of the 737 MAX “As much as the audience responded, we just didn’t get as much media attention as we thought we would,” Lee said.
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While the film enjoyed a standing ovation at Sundance, buzz didn’t travel much farther than the Eccles lobby: Few publications reviewed the movie and it took a year before striking a distribution deal. “Monster” is based on the 1999 YA novel by Walter Dean Myers, which follows a high school honor student (Harrison) who faces prison time following his alleged peripheral involvement in a deadly robbery. People are seeing it, they’re feeling it, and they’re responding to it.” “It didn’t go the way we thought it would, but ultimately we landed where we were supposed to land. “It has been a long journey, but it has been a really good journey,” Lee said. Producers Tonya Lewis Lee and Nikki Silver say it was all worth it: The movie premiered on Netflix May 7 and was among the top 10 Netflix titles in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, it’s seen a title change, its first distribution deal fall through, and the original title restored. premiered at Sundance in 2018 in the U.S. After the legal drama starring Kelvin Harrison Jr. Filmmaking rarely travels a straight path, but for “ Monster” it was exceptionally twisty.