Warner Bros. has released the highly anticipated trailer for ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’, starring Daniel Kaluuya as Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton and Lakeith Stanfield as FBI informant William O’Neal.
The historical drama depicts the betrayal and assassination of 21-year-old Hampton, the chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, who was fatally shot in 1969 by the FBI in its attempt to silence the movement for Black liberation.
“Repeat after me: I am a revolutionary,” Kaluuya’s Hampton declares throughout the trailer. “I am a revolutionary! I am a revolutionary!”
The trailer also sees FBI agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons) threaten Stanfield’s O’Neal into agreeing to feed the government intel about Hampton and the Black Panther Party’s activities.
“You’re looking at 18 months for the stolen car, five years for impersonating a federal officer or you can go home,” Mitchell tells a conflicted O’Neal.
Directed by Shaka King and produced by Ryan Coogler (Marvel’s ‘Black Panther’), ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’ also stars Dominique Fishback (‘The Hate U Give’), Ashton Sanders (‘Moonlight’) and Martin Sheen (‘Grace & Frankie’).
The project also reunites Kaluuya and Stanfield, who previously starred together in Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’, which earned the former an Oscar nomination.
“You can murder a liberator, but you can’t murder a liberation,” Kaluuya’s Hampton says in the preview. “You can murder a revolutionary, but you can’t murder a revolution. And you can murder a freedom fighter, but you can’t murder freedom.”
According to the trailer, the move will arrive “only in theaters” in 2021.
