Free Republic

Netflix has found its young Colin Kaepernick: Jaden Michael. Michael will play the NFL quarterback and civil rights activist in the upcoming series “Colin in Black & White,” and Ava DuVernay will direct the first episode. The six-episode series will follow Kaepernick’s childhood as a young African-American teen growing up in a white adoptive family and how his experiences shaped both his football talent and his activist work.

Hollywood director Ava DuVernay’s entertainment company ARRAY is launching an initiative called the Law Enforcement Accountability Project, that will use art and artists to promote stories about police violence and publicize the names of police officers accused of misconduct. “The stories around police abuse of black people who are unarmed and should not be killed is not being well-told when officers are able to just disappear into the ether,” DuVernay said in an interview with Reuters. “I can … rattle off 30 names of black people who have been murdered by police on film over the last five years, but...

Oprah Winfrey is set to host a two-night town hall on racism in America that will air on her cable channel OWN, as well as across multiple Discovery properties, including the Discovery Channel, TLC, HGTV, and the Science Channel. The televised event, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, will also feature guests including former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams (D) — for whom Oprah flew down to George and campaigned and walked door-to-door for in 2018 — and filmmaker Ava DuVernay. New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who spearheaded the newspaper’s controversial “1619 Project,” is also scheduled to participate.

Ava DuVernay, director of Warner Bros. The New Gods and Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time, demanded that people “resist,” protest, and organize against President Donald Trump or else they’re “part of the problem.” “If you’re not resisting, protesting, organizing or speaking against this filth that Trump demands, you are a part of it,” said Ava DuVernay on Wednesday in the wake of the police involved death of George Floyd. “It’s really simple. Speak up. Silence is no longer an option.” DuVernay deleted the tweet.

Stephen King appeared to backtrack on his recent comments about "never" considering "diversity in matters of art" after criticism from a number of prominent artists, including Ava DuVernay. "The Shining" writer on Tuesday weighed in on the controversy that ensued after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated a nearly all-white slate for acting Oscars. "For me, the diversity issue did not come up," King, who is a voting member of the Academy, wrote on Twitter of his nominations for the best picture, best adapted screenplay and best original screenplay categories. "That said, I would never consider diversity...

Stephen King is under fire on Twitter after downplaying the role of diversity in selecting this year’s Academy Award nominees. “I would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality,” the 72-year-old tweeted on Tuesday. “It seems to me that to do otherwise would be wrong.” In an earlier tweet, King wrote that diversity was not even discussed in the categories he was tasked with nominating. “As a writer, I am allowed to nominate in just 3 categories: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Screenplay,” he explained. “For me, the diversity issue—as it applies to individual actors...

The Hollywood left, from Lady Gaga to Marvel movie star Chris Evans, took to social media on Wednesday and railed against state Senate lawmakers in Alabama where a bill limiting abortions in the state passed by a margin of 25-6. “These statehouses are waging all-out war on women and their right to control their reproductive decisions,” Oscar and Grammy Award-winning singer John Legend said. “This is awful.” “Don’t move forward after reading this like everything is normal. Don’t shake your head at Alabama and then keep going about your day. Realize that this is a warning,” said Disney film director...

Sterling K. Brown, Ava DuVernay and Jane Fonda are among thousands of people who signed an open letter calling on the entertainment industry for gender pay equality for production workers. “It’s time for the Entertainment Industry to take a hard look at its pay and compensation practices above and below the line to make sure all productions meet the legal — and moral — requirement to pay fairly without discrimination,” says the letter, which will be delivered to the heads of major studios, networks and production companies. Entertainment union IATSE hired Working IDEAL to evaluate the gender wage bias in...

A Wrinkle in Time director Ava DuVernay ripped President Donald Trump in a Wednesday tweet in response to the president’s taunting of Democrat firebrand Maxine Waters. DuVernay jumped to Twitter to call Trump a “mistake of history.” “You have no sense of self outside of the disparagement of others,” DuVernay tweeted. “You project your weakness onto others. You are of no substance. You will go down in history as a mistake. A mistake that unified many, reminding us of the best in ourselves by being a violent example of the worst.”(continued)

Oprah Winfrey latest movie “A Wrinkle In Time” just premiered, and it’s officially been labeled a flop. The award-winning book that the movie is based on is a science fiction fantasy about Christianity’s concept of good versus evil, but Winfrey and the Black Lives Matter director Ava DuVernay erased Christianity, making it New Age and politically correct. You’ll be shocked how “Christians and white people” are now blamed for its horrendous reviews. Oprah Winfrey starring in “A Wrinkle In Time” (left), a stock image of moviegoers (right). Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 award-winning book “A Wrinkle In Time” is known for its...

The Vanity Fair–Bloomberg cocktail reception that follows the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, held at the franco-swank residence of the French ambassador, is the kind of party where Katie Couric can kick off her shoes and spend much of the party in bare feet. It’s the kind of party where Charlie Rose and Ashley Judd stand by one of several bars and engage in a lot of intense close-talking. It’s the kind of party where one waits in line to use the loo, just as one has done at every normal, far less glitzy house party since the 1990s. But then...