*Director Deon Taylor was rollin’. The brother had it going on and then the coronavirus struck and along with the rest of Hollywood, he got shut down.
In 2019, his films “The Intruder” and “Black and Blue,” made out big at the box office and he was looking forward to the release of his upcoming psychological thriller, “Fatale” which had been scheduled to debut in theaters on June 22.
“Coming off of The Intruder, coming out of Black and Blue, we were like, okay, here we go. And all of a sudden, it just was like, everything stops,” Taylor told UrbanHollywood411.com‘s Anita Bennett during a recent Zoom interview regarding “Fatale” and how the COVID-19 outbreak is affecting African-American journalists.
“We truly are an independent company,” Taylor said about his Hidden Empire banner. “We finance every movie we make. We’ve been fortunate enough to make films that studios want to buy and put out wide.”
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Lionsgate, said Taylor, was in it to win it and had committed to a “giant marketing campaign” for the thriller before the ‘rona struck and basically shut down the world. However, there is good news because earlier this month, the studio announced the film will now move to an Oct. 30 release date.
The part that hurts is the fact that before the virus outbreak, 2020 was on pace to be a hella year for black films, Taylor laments.
“We just started getting a lot of us writers going and black directors going and black producers going, like literally, this year was becoming almost historic, where you see a lot of us working,” he said.
Now that outlook is down the drain. He has concerns that projects from black creatives like himself will be sidelined.
“We’ll probably be the first to get cut off of those budgets,” he said. “When you’re talking about what they’re going to make, they’re going to tend to lean towards the hundred million dollar tentpole film that’s going to make a bunch of money, versus that mid-film that’s $15- to $30 million with a black lead.”
There’s MORE to Deon Taylor’s story. Get it at UrbanHollywood411.com.
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