Get Out‘s Daniel Kaluuya will soon star in a new socially-conscious film, Queen and Slim, a Universal Pictures crime thriller that received a first trailer during Sunday night’s BET Awards. Written by Lena Waithe (Master of None, The Chi) and directed by Melina Matsoukas (Beyonce’s Formation), the project appears to be inspired by recent high-profile traffic stops that have sparked controversy and gone viral while highlighting racially-charged outcomes. Waithe has called this film “protest art,” but she’s also clarified that she based her screenplay upon an original idea from James Frey (A Million Little Pieces).
The trailer plays rotely at first with Kaluuya and a woman played by Jodie Turner-Smith embarking upon a run-of-the-mill first date. Soon enough, a life-altering encounter with police changes everything. From the synopsis:
While on a forgettable first date together in Ohio, a black man and a black woman are pulled over for a minor traffic infraction. The situation escalates, with sudden and tragic results, when the man kills the police officer in self-defense. Terrified and in fear for their lives, the man, a retail employee, and the woman, a criminal defense lawyer, are forced to go on the run. But the incident is captured on video and goes viral, and the couple unwittingly become a symbol of trauma, terror, grief and pain for people across the country..
We do hear Slim discuss wanting a “ride or die,” and that’s not the only Bonnie and Clyde similarity at hand (one character actually mentions the classic film) as the duo transforms into unlikely fugitives who barely know each other. The viral-video edge will look all too familiar to viewers as the pair falls deeply in love, despite their desperate circumstances, while aiming to avoid further tragedy. The movie debuted at CinemaCon, where it earned positive buzz, earlier this year.
Queen and Slim arrives in theaters in November.
