(CelebNMusic247 – News) Mo’Nique Returns To Screen In Indie Blackbird
Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in Precious, Mo’Nique joins Isaiah Washington in the Patrik Ian Polk-directed Blackbird, an adaptation of the novel by Larry Duplechan.
Here is the drop via Deadline:
Last fall that Washington took the lead in this indie off his turn as the DC sniper in Blue Caprice got him a Gotham Award nom. The pic just shot in Hattiesburg, MS.
Mo’Nique is also exec producer with her husband, Sidney Hicks, through Hicks Media. Newcomer Julian Walker plays the star singer in the church choir who feels like a misfit in his high school and struggles with his sexual awakening and the realization he is gay, something that doesn’t land well in a religiously conservative small Mississippi town. This coincides with his younger sister going missing and his parents splitting up. Mo’Nique plays another character who’s not going to win mother of the year awards: the youth’s heartbroken mom, who blames her son’s lifestyle revelation for his sister going missing. Washington plays his supportive father trying his best to help his son’s transition to manhood.
This is a perfect film for Isaiah Washington since his anti-gay remarks caused him his career on Grey’s Anatomy in 2007. Since then Washington has kept a low profile in Hollywood until now. He recent spoke to US Weekly on how “Everything Fell Apart” after the infamous “gay slur scandal.”
Hicks said:
“Blackbird is a film about the choices people are forced to make as they struggle to figure out how to be themselves.”
“And why should just being who you are be a struggle? Since Mo’Nique won the Oscar, we have received a flood of scripts, but nothing captured our attention until Isaiah — who we have a high level of respect for — sent us Blackbird. We became instant fans of Patrik-Ian Polk and knew we had to get behind this important film.”
Polk is producing through Tall Skinny Black Boy Productions, Keith Brown through Kbiz Entertainment, Washington through his Coalhouse Productions, and Carol Ann Shine. Terrell Tilford, Gary L. Gray, Kevin Allesee, Torrey Laamar, Nikki Jane and D. Woods round out the cast.
Congrats to our friends Keith Brown, Kbiz Entertainment and Carol Ann Shine.
