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.