Social media is buzzing over Keke Palmer and her colorful crew of professional shoplifters in upcoming Bay area-heist comedy I Love Boosters–the latest brilliantly bonkers film from visionary filmmaker Boots Riley.
In I Love Boosters (premiering at this year’s SXSW Festival), Palmer engages in sticky-fingered shenanigans with Taylour Page, Naomi Ackie, Poppy Liu, and Eiza González who, together, are the Velvet Gang targeting a ruthless fashion maven (Demi Moore) as their, uh, unique brand of community service.
“I shop here a lot, and I feel like I should have it all,” says a fabulously dressed Palmer in the opening scene of the teaser. “I just want to take it all home, heat it up and shoot it out my eyes. I just feel like, ‘Give it to me. It’s mine, anyway.’”
Check out the teaser trailer below:
Written and directed by Riley (known for his 2018 mind-blower Sorry to Bother You and underrated Prime Video series I’m a Virgo), I Love Boosters also stars LaKeith Stanfield, Don Cheadle, and Will Poulter who round out the star-studded cast for one of 2026’s most anticipated films.
“We can’t wait for our audience to be sucked into his singular, subversive world where razor-sharp social commentary meets fearless, surreal storytelling and eye-popping imagery — all powered by a ridiculously stacked cast of some of the most talented actors on the planet,” said Claudette Godfrey, SXSW VP of Film & TV in a statement announcing the selection, per IndieWire.
“I Love Boosters is audacious, entertaining, and guaranteed to get our festival off to an unforgettable start. Trust us, you’ll want to be there when The Velvet Gang bursts onto the scene!”
Will you be seated for I Love Boosters in theaters May 22, 2026? Tell us down below and peep some social media hysteria over the buzzy film on the flip.
Lear Rex is a forthcoming film adaptation of William Shakespeare’s King Lear. Bernard Rose wrote and directed the film, which Barry Navidi is producing.
The newly announced cast members of Lear Rex include Ariana DeBose (West Side Story) as Cordelia, Brosnahan (Superman) as Regan, Dinklage (Game of Thrones) as the Fool, Danny Huston (The Crow) as Albany, Chris Messina (The Boogeyman) as Cornwall, Stanfield (Judas and the Black Messiah) as Edmund, Ted Levine (The Silence of the Lambs) as Kent, Matthew Jacobs (Vice) as Gloucester, Rhys Coiro (Entourage) as Oswald, and Stephen Dorff (Blade) as Poor Tom.
Pacino, meanwhile, is playing King Lear, while Chastain is playing Goneril.
What else do we know about Lear Rex?
“In Lear Rex, an aging King divides his land between his three daughters to prevent future conflict,” the synopsis for the movie reads. “But he rejects the young daughter who loves him and places his trust in her malevolent sisters, who strip him of his power and condemn him to a wretched wasteland of horror and insanity.”
“It is enormously exciting to get the opportunity to work with this extraordinary cast that Al, Barry, and Sharon have put together to tackle this radical, but accessible adaptation of Shakespeare’s greatest play,” Rose said in a statement.
Navidi added, “I am delighted to have the opportunity to collaborate with Bernard Rose. His artistic vision, combined with a talented ensemble cast of players led by Al Pacino, promises to take us on a remarkable and unforgettable cinematic experience. We are merging the worlds of Shakespeare and Hollywood. This marks the commencement of an exciting new chapter, one that Al has poured his heart and soul into. It is a privilege for me to join forces with my dear friend once more, and to contribute to his enduring legacy.”
Lear Rex will begin filming on August 12, 2024, in Los Angeles. A release date has not yet been announced.
The Book Of Clarencearrives in theaters Friday and critics and costars alike are praising LaKeith Stanfield’s performance.
Source: Courtesy / Sony Pictures
The film, which is director Jeymes Samuel’s take on the Hollywood Biblical epic, stars Stanfield as Clarence — a young Black man, struggling to make it in Jerusalem. He’s down bad, no money to his name, indebted to the brother of the woman he loves but isn’t worthy to be with. His twin is a disciple of Jesus, who is performing miracles left and right and has the people in awe. Clarence forges a plan with his friend Elijah to become a kind of Messiah himself, and after faking a few miracles and performing some actual good deeds, he slowly finds his way to betterment — until Pontius Pilate, portrayed by James McAvoy, intervenes. You might have an idea of how it all ends…
In the clip below, McAvoy opens up about his admiration for Stanfield. It’s wonderful to watch.
Check it out below:
We really love how James sings LaKeith Stanfield’s praises. We definitely agree with his sentiments about how captivating Stanfield’s work is.
The Book Of Clarence is in theaters January 12, 2024. Are you excited to see it?
Atlanta tastemakers and move makers came from far and wide to experience The Book Of Clarence at a special screening event with surprise appearances by LaKeith Stanfield, John Boyega, and Writer/Director Jeymes Samuel ahead of the film’s release next month.
Source: Paras Griffin/Getty Images for Sony Pictures
Source: Derek White/Getty Images
Source: Paras Griffin/Getty Images for Sony Pictures
Hosted by our very own Sr. Content Director of Pop Culture Janeé Bolden, the exclusive affair was an electric celebration of 2024’s first big film that’s already fueling discussions across social media.
Source: Paras Griffin/Getty Images for Sony Pictures
In The Book of Clarence, a down-on-his-luck everyman named Clarence (LaKeith Stanfield) is struggling to find a better life for his family while fighting to free himself of debt.
“Captivated by the power and glory of the rising Messiah and His apostles, he risks everything to carve his own path to a divine life, and ultimately discovers that the redemptive power of belief may be his only way out,” per the official synopsis.
Check out the trailer below:
Directed by Oscar-buzzy filmmaker Jeymes Samuel, the multi-layered film also stars Benedict Cumberbatch, James McAvoy, Alfre Woodard, Teyana Taylor, Omar Sy, and David Oyelowo with new music by JAY-Z, Lil Wayne, Kid Cudi, and more.
“As a storyteller, I wanna give audiences something they’ve never seen before,” said Samuel in a statement released alongside the teaser trailer.
“I want to deepen our understanding of the historical context that has helped shape our beliefs. And as an entertainer, I wanna show you a wickedly dope time where those three points intersect, is The Book of Clarence, a cinematic extravaganza, 2000 years in the making. The idea for The Book of Clarence came out of my admiration for Hollywood epics set in biblical times and truly, I love them all. Movies like Ben Hur and Spartacus unearth something of daily life in that era, that were ground level and all the richer for it.
After all, the Bible gives you broad strokes, those are the bricks. The mortar that holds it all together is our faith. But what of the stories that exist within the cracks of that mortar? What of the everyday nonfictional lives that crisscross with biblical history as a backdrop? What of the hairdressers, and the village cobblers and the charlatans, and the guy that made Jesus’ sandals? All of those people, what of them? The people that walked the very same earth as Jesus Christ. The Book of Clarence is that story.
It’s a story about a man’s journey of self discovery. Clarence was a dreamer, but he isn’t necessarily an executor of those dreams. He can do anything, but he doesn’t see within himself that he can. He doesn’t know his own power. He’s a man without faith who discovers that with God at his back, he too can walk on water and my sincerest hope is that you see this film and conclude that while our dreams may seem out of reach, they are not dreams at all.
They are your ambitions, your plans, and your intentions, and they’re quite tangible and real. Enjoy and have a wickedly dope time!
The Book of Clarence opens in theaters Jan. 12, 2024.
Just in time for the Halloween season, Disney’s new version of Haunted Mansion is coming to Disney+. The movie is based on the classic thrill ride at Disneyland, of course. It’s not the first time the ride has been adapted into film, since there was an Eddie Murphy-fronted effort back in 2003. In 2010, Guillermo Del Toro was attached to direct another Haunted Mansion-themed project, but it failed to materialize.
The new film stars a ton of heavy hitters in an all-star ensemble cast, made up of the likes of Lakeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Rosario Dawson, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jared Leto. If you don’t want to subscribe to Disney+ just to watch the movie, you’ll also be able to purchase a digital version of the film starting on the same date.
The film hit theaters on July 28, and it received pretty mixed reviews. Here is an excerpt from ScreenCrush’s own 5/10 review:
If Haunted Mansion had been a little more invested in this bereavement theme, it might have risen to the level of something like Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, which elevated an exercise in corporate brand refurbishment through sheer force of directorial vision. Simien’s film never quite gets there; it’s so possessed with recreating the ride’s details that it misses a bit of the ride’s spirit. A list of Easter eggs hidden in Haunted Mansion would be a waste of time; practically everything is an Easter egg, and none of them are hidden.
Unfortunately, the people involved in the project were unable to attend the premiere of the movie as a result of the ongoing strike. It seems like the consensus is that the film isn’t quite funny or scary enough to work.
Haunted Mansion premieres on Disney+ on October 4.
As a white woman I know I’m probably experiencing episodes differently than some Black viewers watching the show. Did you discuss those different audiences while making the show?
That’s kind of the great thing about making this show is you’re hovering at this intersection of different cultural gazes. It’s scripted and created by two guys who grew up in Atlanta in a very Black neighborhood, and a lot of that stuff is presented very matter-of-factly in the show—it’s not presented for white viewers, and it is put in there without any ceremony or explanation. This show’s also very aware that a big chunk of the audience, we’re not accustomed to Southern Black culture, and I think we try to construct it in a way where the show feels welcoming to anyone who walks into the room, whether they understand the context or not. That’s in the tone of the show, and also just in the performances and the warmth of these characters.
As a non-Black director, presumably there were times when you’ve had to try to understand the implications of something unfamiliar to you.
It’s a conversation that me, Donald, and Steve have all the time. Sometimes I’ll get the context of something wrong and present it in a weird way and then they end up liking it! That’s the combustible, exciting thing at the center of the show, like an overlap of multiple perspectives. All of our hands are on the Ouija board in some way, and we trust each other enough that we just tend to let it take us wherever it wants to go.
You just talked about getting the context wrong sometimes. So manyAtlantaepisodes dig into how white people project things onto Blackness, or depictwhitenessand wrestle over cultural co-optation.
That’s absolutely true. And also, in the pilot, Earn was an outsider. He’s a Princeton dropout who walked into this world where his cousin was an upcoming rapper and he got roasted by people in this world for not understanding the culture, you know? So I think it’s always been about people who are slightly outside looking in.
In the finale, there’s the scene where the Black sushi chef is lecturing the gang about how Popeyes sells a fake version of Black culture back to the community. But the chef is a pretty terrifying figure, so the viewer is being pulled in multiple directions.
Yeah, I think the Atlanta code is that everybody’s right and everybody’s wrong at the same time.
You’re continuing your collaboration with Donald Glover, working on his new showMr. & Mrs. Smith.Does it require a completely different kind of visual vocabulary?
Yeah, it’s a completely different thing. The incredible thing about Atlanta is, it doesn’t promise you anything other than that you’ll be with these people for 30 minutes. There’s no set expectations for language or genre or how much comedy or drama should be in it. But you expect certain things out of a spy-related story, so it becomes a conversation about when do we lean into those, and when do we subvert them?
So what are the chances of bringingAtlantacharacters back to life in the future? Between Alfred’s dancing in “Crank that Killer” and his and Earn’s rendition of “Old MacDonald” in the finale, I’d like to see a special Broadway musical episode ofAtlanta.
The only way this show comes back is as a Broadway musical! [Laughs.]
So a future season or one-off is not something you’ve toyed with?
We often joke that we’ll come back when we’re all 70. It’ll be called Atlanta: Lottie’s Revenge. If there’s a good story to tell, I think we’re all open to the idea of reopening the door. But it feels right to have this [finale] as a punctuation point.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Every time SZA comes out of the woodwork, it always seems to be worth the wait (case in point: “I Hate U”). And her latest single and video, “Shirt” (soon to be frequently misspelled as “Shit”), is no exception to that phenomenon. Directed by Dave Meyers, it’s clear from the outset that SZA is riffing on the Bonnie and Clyde dynamic that Quentin Tarantino re-popularized in 1994’s Pulp Fiction with Ringo a.k.a. Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Yolanda a.k.a. Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) in the illustrious diner scene that serves as beginning and end points for the film.
Indeed, SZA’s own narrative for “Shirt” begins in a diner, with her “Clyde” played by LaKeith Stanfield (of Atlanta fame). As the two sit facing one another in a booth, close-up shots on their serene countenances present a kind of sexual tension. Or at least, a tension. Sounding a bit like Madonna talking about Kabbalah in the 00s, SZA proceeds to inform her boo, “Color is light, light is energy—energy’s everything.” “What about these salt shakers?” he asks (forgetting that it’s a set of salt and pepper shakers). She confirms, “Energy.” “This table?” “Energy.” He leans in and then inquires seductively, “You and me?” The seduction, however, is ruined by the sudden realization that there’s another “energy” at the table. Specifically, “Clyde’s” goonish friend, who shouts, “Yo, come on!” in disgust. “Shut up nigga, damn!” “Clyde” screams as he slaps him upside the happy-face-hair-design head. In irritation, “Clyde” adds, “You see we talkin’?” He turns back to SZA and says, “You were sayin’?” Without missing a beat, she concludes, “Energy.” With that, the indelible beat (courtesy of the amazing Rodney Jerkins a.k.a. Darkchild) commences as SZA casually shoots “Clyde’s” friend in the cabeza, which we see briefly from the perspective of the inside of his busted-ass mouth.
Meyers then cuts to a scene of the two dressed in nun attire as they enter a “church” that looks plucked straight out of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. Inside, pregnant “nuns” hold neon blue crosses above their head with a cowboy hat-wearing “minister” in between them as other “nuns” in various states of undress and sexual poses also populate the scene. SZA and “Clyde” then open fire as a barrage of interspersed scenes featuring them generally causing mayhem ensue. This includes the sight of a dead, bloodied old lady in a trunk (covered in money, naturally), a dead clown in a stairwell and a dead construction worker on the ground. Just some average daily carnage, it would seem. But what else were we to expect with an opening verse like, “Kiss me dangerous/Been so lost without you all around me/Get anxious/Lead me, don’t look back/It’s all about you.” Such lyrics speaking of intertwined, “crazy love” coupledom could provide no other type of video concept. It’s almost a wonder SZA didn’t go the True Romance homage route instead, but then, Tove Lo sort of has the monopoly on that right now after writing a song of the same name about that very film for Dirt Femme.
The presence of the aforementioned “church” atmosphere also accents SZA giving in to darkness even in places of (supposed) light—this being further evident when she sings, “Broad day, sunshine/I’ll find a way to fuck it up still” and “In the dark right now/Feelin’ lost, but I like it/Comfort in my sins and all about me.” And “Clyde” is all about him, too, as he breaks the cardinal rule of “crazy love” by popping SZA in the stomach (hence, “Blood stain on my shirt”) and driving off in a car with a license plate that reads, “NOCTRL” (an overt nod to SZA’s debut album being named Ctrl). But “Clyde” didn’t seem to get the message SZA was sending about “energy” earlier—and now, even her ghost has become that as it floats up out of her body (with “Clyde’s” own face/energy flickering in and out of her visage) and ostensibly gets recycled back into the universe.
Maybe that’s how SZA is able to return and “haunt” “Clyde.” Not just when he looks in the rearview mirror and sees her reflection in it, but also when he ends up tied to a chair in a warehouse after crashing the car as a result of the shock that came with the vision of spectral SZA. After that crash, she reanimates into a new-but-same body in the warehouse as the fitting lyrics, “It’s what you say and how you do me/How I’m ‘posed to trust, baby?/‘Posed to love?/It ain’t supposed to hurt this way/All I need is the best of you/Baby, how I got to say it?/Give me all of you” play over the scene.
Since “Clyde” suddenly can’t, for whatever reason, give all of himself, SZA has no problem walking away from her erstwhile boyfriend as he’s left to the proverbial violent henchmen. In the next scene, she appears with a shorter haircut in front of a trashcan fire as she turns around to shoot and kill her own shadow (something Peter Pan probably wanted to do more than a few times). We then see still another “version” or “energy form” of SZA ride off into the sunset on a boat during the video’s conclusion, a moment that speaks to the lines in the forewarning chorus, “Still don’t know my worth/Still stressin’ perfection/Let you all in my mental/Got me lookin’ too desperate/Damn (You ain’t deserve).” So, yeah, she up and left.
Generously, SZA doesn’t leave her viewer entirely at the end of the video the way she does her man. For she provides us not only with a final iconic look (bombastic yellow eye makeup coordinated with a Dole shirt), but also with a snippet of her next single, “Blind.” This as we see her in the kitchen/dishwashing area of the same diner as before, standing next to the same “Butcher” (Isaak Adoyi) we glimpsed previously watching the now-dismantled couple at the table from his sequestered perch. Hopefully, a “Part 2” of this concept will follow. Just as Quentin offered a Vol. 2 for Kill Bill.
