Michael K. Williams joins ‘Superfly’ remake
The Superfly remake is set to hit theaters this summer. It's already locked in an incredibly star-studded cast.
The Super Fly remake is set to hit theaters this summer, and already, we're looking at an incredibly star-studded cast.
The Superfly remake is set to hit theaters this summer, and already, we’re looking at an incredibly star-studded cast.
The latest addition to the blaxploitation crime drama is Michael K. Williams, best known for his role on The Wire. Williams will be playing Scatter. According to Deadline, Esai Morales has signed on to play Adalberto.
The growing cast includes the likes of Trevor Jackson, Jason Mitchell, Lex Scott Davis, Andrea Londo, Jacob Ming-Trent, Omar Chapparo, and Allen Maldonado.
—Michael K. Williams reveals he was addicted to cocaine while playing Omar on ‘The Wire’—
Superfly follows the story of a cocaine dealer who’s ready to get out of the business, but before he goes, he wants to do just one more deal. Alex Tse has written the script for the remake of the original 1972 film.
Joel Silver is producing alongside Future, who will also be heading up the soundtrack of the film. Steven R. Shore, Matthew Hirsch, Hal Sadoff, and Aaron Auch are set to executive produce.
“Kill the Messenger”
This isn’t the first film Williams has been part of telling the story of a drug dealer, though Kill the Messenger in 2014 aimed to tell a very different story from Superfly: that of one of the most notorious U.S. drug dealers, “Freeway” Ricky Ross.
The film is based on a true story derived from the 2001 novel, Kill the Messenger, which follows a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, Gary Webb, who ultimately exposes the CIA for helping import cocaine into California during the 1980s.
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In 2004, Webb was found shot to death, and to this day, many people speculate that there was foul play involved in his death.
“I prepared [for Kill the Messenger] by meeting [“Freeway”] Ricky Ross. I got to meet him. I consider him a friend now,” Williams said in an interview with theGrio.com at the time.
“The persona that the rapper has created couldn’t be further from the real Rick Ross,” he said. “The real Rick Ross was a young man in the streets of L.A. that had dreams of becoming a tennis player. He excelled in tennis and was allowed to go through the L.A. school system completely illiterate. When it came time to talk about college scholarships for him, they found out that he was illiterate, and it all went away.”
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“The system literally failed him,” Williams added. “That’s what intrigued me about taking this role and portraying him. Not to glorify the fact that he was a drug dealer, because I don’t think that’s something he’s proud of.”
