Super Fly
Director X is a picture show and euphony video theater director who has worked with artists like Drake , Kanye West , and Jay - Z. The Canadian behave manager has also consulted on fashion and has a clothing ancestry , X Fit . He latterly directed the upcoming action filmSuperfly , a remake of the 1972 blaxploitation criminal offence drama , which comes out June 13 , 2018 .
Screen Rant had the opportunity to sit down with Director X , where we discourse his motivation for doing the movie , whatSuperflysays about the American Dream today , the evolution of rose hip hops and its influence on the film , and howSuperflytouches on theme relevant in today ’s culture .
SR : felicitation , on the film . I have to call for , what motivated you to do this cult classic filmSuperfly ?
Director X : I signify , it was a caper that was out there . Silver Pictures had the rights . They had a hand . They came to me to talk about it . And the first version they had , the first book I read was actually base on King Lear .
It had been through a very Hollywood story over like 20 years . They had the right field and the studio apartment did n’t want to make the movie about the same matter the pic was about . And did n’t desire to call it Superfly . So then they went and sound out , “ What if we do King Lear ? ” So they took King Lear and made that into a street story . But then they lost the rights and they named it something else . And then they get the rights back . And then they put it back on this King Lear and then they give it to me .
And I was like , “ What is ? This is n’t superfly . ” I ’m like , “ Oh , it ’s King Lear . Oh , that ’s a great idea . I ’d screw to do Shakespeare in the cowling . But , that ’s not Superfly . permit ’s do Superfly . ” And they order , “ All right , countenance ’s do Superfly . ” So we put that old script away and we really dived into the original film and jump collapse down the essential character moments . The all important characters , they ’re essential moments . Things that have to fall out . That was really how things started germinate into the movie you see .
SR : Interesting . So Priest surpasses expectation from the originalSuperflyfilm . What does that say about the American dream ? How does that verbalise to the American dream for anyone that ’s pursuing it now ?
Director X : I imply , attend , the American dream is that you could fare here with nothing and end up on the top . you may start from the very , very bottom and end up on the very top of the pile . And that ’s Priest ’s story . We all have that feeling . We all have pipe dream you want to achieve . And his , you get it on , he wants out , they ai n’t require to really want to live this spirit . You know what I ’m suppose ? But that ’s the one he ’s in .
SR : You ’ve directed some of the most iconic music picture for the retiring couple of tenner from Rihanna , to Drake , everybody in between . How has hip hop from the 1990s germinate and how did that influence Superfly at all , especially go with Future ?
Director X : It was the bunker medicine speech sound when we said we ’re going to go to Atlanta , we ’re going to get a Future . We were really dealing in a sound of today , right ? So we let that become what it was depart to become as opposed to making something that ’s retro or my personal preference in medicine . It was none of those things . It was really taking the elements that the original had . In that Curtis Mayfield was speaking as a queer voice artistically about the movie itself with medicine that was very much of the daylight . So that ’s what we wanted to do here . Say , “ Alright , we obtain one . We have this one player who ’s bring us into this humanity . His sound inform it and it will be the music of the Clarence Day . ” And that was , hopefully the hearing find that ’s where we landed .
SR : Right . Well , one thing that I really , I love a lot about this film is how relevant it is to our current clime in the cosmos . It touches on police force brutality along with many other thing . So talk to me about the social issues that you want to do . Because they ’re subtly addressed , some mighty there in your boldness . But talk to me about that a piffling bit .
Director X : I mean , again , they all evolved from the original moving picture . And the original motion picture , Priest , it gets caught up with muddied copper . At the end of the movie , he beats them up and he outsmarts them . You ca n’t touch me , you know , this whole matter . So we said , alright , Priest outsmarts everybody . He beats up a fuzz . It ’s like a logline . In our moving picture he outmanoeuvre everybody beats up a cop . But he crush up these cops that had done him wrong . And these ones that were really in the community do it around . So , those , it was n’t like we said , “ Let ’s make this a thing in this motion-picture show . ” It was already there . We just updated it to speak to today as opposed to what was going on .
And then there ’s some thing that , like the railcar chase , we demand a cable car chase . We want a big car Salmon P. Chase and what have we not seen before ? What if it happens in the park ? What if they go through here ? Well we ’ve got to kill the bad guy . Well , what if he hits a statue ? What if it ’s a collaborator statue ? And the statue issue forth down . They ’re like , so there ’s elements again , everything always came from begin at the flick . What ’s best for the pic , what are we sample to do ? And then they build up to a point that we mat up great about it , that also would talk to our audience . But we were never like , “ Oh , I want to do something with a statue . Oh , I want to do something with it . ”
We never endeavor to force the movie to go where we want to go . We let it go where it involve to go . And we ended up having something that as much , even though it ’s a big merriment action movie and you know if you ’re face to , this is n’t where you total for your drug sell steer . ( LAUGHS ) You ’re not going to get a real privileged scoop on a Atlanta drug culture here , but you ’ll have a good sentence . It ’ll be like a big action movie . But we ’re able-bodied to extend to on some thing that are materialize in the populace .
