Spike Lee’s ‘BlacKkKlansman’ Gets August Release Date and Name Change

Spike Lee’s new film, BlacKkKlansman, is going to be released by Focus Features on August 10th and gets a name change, too (it was previously Black Klansman).

That means the film is not going to hit the fall festivals as most studios’ awards contenders do (save a Get Out once in a great while) but further boosts the strong chance of the film showing up in the Cannes lineup when that announcement is made this week.

That date coincides with the one-year anniversary of the events in Charlottesville, North Carolina where white nationalists and Neo Nazis were met with resistance from counter-protesters that left one protester dead and 20 injured when a Nazi sympathizer ran his car through the crowd.

The film is based on the true story of Ron Stallworth, the first black police officer in Colorado Springs, Colorado, who went undercover in 1978 to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan. Stallworth is played by John David Washington, son of two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington (no pressure there). Adam Driver plays Washington’s partner and the film also stars Topher Grace, Laura Harrier, Ryan Eggold, Paul Walter Hauser and Corey Hawkins.

Newly minted Oscar winner Jordan Peele is a producer on the film (with his company Monkeypaw) along with QC Entertainment, Blumhouse, Lee and Shaun Reddick. Spike Lee has been nominated for two Oscars, Best Original Screenplay (for 1989’s Do the Right Thing) and Best Documentary Feature (for 1997’s 4 Little Girls) and was given an Honorary Oscar in 2016.

• Author
• Recent Posts

Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

Latest posts by Erik Anderson (see all)

• 2024 North Carolina Film Critics Association (NCFCA) Nominations - December 21, 2024
• 2024 Philadelphia Film Critics Circle (PFCC) Winners: ‘Anora’ Named Best Film Among its Six Awards - December 21, 2024
• 2024 Utah Film Critics Association (UFCA) Nominations - December 21, 2024