Courtesy of Glen Wilson/Warner Bros. Entertainment
Making of Judas and the Black Messiah : How Director Shaka King Created a Fred Hampton Biopic Inside a Classic 1970s Thriller
by Pamela McClintock
February 11, 2021, 7:00am PST
Those behind the drama that stars Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield were determined to tell the story of the assassinated Black Panther leader: The biggest compliment I’ve been paid is when people say, Yo, how the hell did you get to make this?
Ryan Coogler was finishing Marvel s historic
Black Panther superhero movie when a panther figure of a different kind came into his life. He and his wife, Zinzi, were having dinner in the Brooklyn backyard of filmmaker and friend Shaka King in August 2017 when King mentioned a project he wanted to direct about Fred Hampton, the famed Chicago Black Panther Party leader. In 1969, Hampton was assassinated by law enforcement with the help of petty thief William O Neal, who became a key FBI informant in