Spike Lee has had better points in his career than this one. It’s a full eight years since his last legitimate hit, “Inside Man,” and recent attempts at a comeback have ended up disappointing somewhat: John Boyega-starring HBO show “Da Brick” didn’t get picked up beyond a pilot, indie “Red Hook Summer” failed to find much of an audience, and last year’s “Oldboy” was a critical and commercial washout.
But you can’t keep a great director down, and Lee didn’t hang about: even before “Oldboy” hit theaters, the filmmaker had taken to Kickstarter to raise the budget for another movie, called “Da Sweet Blood Of Jesus,” a rare dip into the horror genre that promises to be his own unique spin on the vampire movie, described by the filmmaker as being about “human beings who are addicted to blood. Funny, sexy and bloody.” The film’s mostly under wraps still, but it’s set to premiere the weekend after net at the 18th Annual American Black Film Festival, and ahead of that BlackFilm have landed the first official still from the film. It gives away absolutely nothing, aside from a glimpse of leads Zaraah Abrahams and Stephen Thyrone Williams, but it’s good to know that the film exists at least.
Also debuting a new image today is “The Judge,” a new star vehicle for Robert Downey Jr. The actor isn’t performing superheroics or solving Victorian crimes this time: the film’s a genre-bending drama with a much-touted script about a hotshot attorney who returns home to defend his father, the titular magistrate (Robert Duvall) from a hit-and-run charge. Directed by David Dobkin (“Wedding Crashers“), the film has a promising supporting cast including Billy Bob Thornton, Vera Farmiga, Leighton Meester, Vincent D’Onofrio, Dax Shepard, Melissa Leo and David Krumholtz. Whether it proves to be worthwhile remains to be seen, but the film lands in theaters on October 10th, the prime “Argo“/”Gravity” slot for Warner Bros, so they certainly seem to have high hopes. Take a look at the image below, courtesy of EW.
