Jennifer Hudson belts her heart out in the trailer for Black Nativity, a musical adaptation of noted queer poet Langston Hughes’ celebrated play of the same name. Joining her is an all-star cast that includes Forest Whitaker, Angela Bassett, legendary rapper Nas and Queen of Hip Hop Soul, Mary J. Blige — rocking the best hair we’ve seen all year.
From Entertainment Weekly:
Based on Hughes’ 1961 “gospel-song play” about the birth of Jesus, writer-director Kasi Lemmons (Talk to Me) gives the story a contemporary spin and setting by exploring the coming-of-age pains of Langston (Jacob Latimore), who’s sent from Baltimore by his struggling mother (Hudson) to live with his grandparents (Forest Whitaker and Angela Bassett) in Harlem.
While we’ll gladly take J.Hud screaming in our collective faces any day of the week, they had us at “Academy Award snubbee nominee Angela Bassett.” And this was just the fabulous icing on the cake:
Black Nativity descends into theaters November 27.
B Damion
This looks made for TV. I am not a fan of MJ. This is going to suck.
bobbyjoe
Are they gonna acknowledge that Langston Hughes was a major atheist? If you’re going to explore the “coming-of-age” of young Langston in the context of his “gospel-song-play” can you leave out the part where (in one of his most famous essays) he describes one of the most important moments of revelation in his young life, where he was sitting in church and feeling nothing? Langston liked the Gospel style, but he assuredly didn’t believe the religion behind it.