Latest in Chi-Raq

Spike Lee, John Cusack and Nick Cannon came to the Berlinale today in support of Lee's Chicago-set anti-gun-violence musical satire Chi-Raq. The Amazon-backed pic is making its international premiere out of competition in Berlin, a festival with a strong political bent. That was in evidence today with a press…

Speaking out for more diversity in Hollywood, the Chi-Raq director received an Honorary Oscar last November at the Governors Awards, but today Spike Lee says he will not be attending the Academy Awards on February 28 because of “another all white ballot.” No African-Americans were among the Best Director, Best Actor, B…

After taking to Kickstarter in 2013 to raise funds for his pic Da Sweet Blood Of Jesus, Spike Lee ventured into new territory again in 2015 with the Amazon Studios release of Chi-Raq. Based on Aristophanes' Lysistrata, the passionately anti-gun-violence film was the inaugural feature to be fully financed and put in…

Chi-Raq, Spike Lee's film about gang violence in Chicago, features Jennifer Hudson as Irene–a mother whose young daughter is killed. This was an especially difficult role for Hudson on a personal level, because her mother, brother and nephew were victims of Chicago gun crime in 2008. As Hudson says, "I was definitely…

4TH/5TH UPDATE, Sunday AM/Monday: With actuals. During one of the hardest weekends of the year to open a movie, Universal did so with Legendary’s holiday horror comedy Krampus earning $16.3M in second place, which is better than the $10M-$13M that the town and Uni were expecting. Tack on $3.3M and you have a global…

Publicists and marketing execs no doubt are working overtime this week to get their films attention in what is shaping up to be a very busy first weekend of December. One film that packed quite a punch in the news this week is Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq, which is the first Amazon Studios title to make its bow. Roadside…

The premier of Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq comes at a tenuous time for the city so plagued by violence that the unofficial nickname, from which Lee’s latest gets its name, compares it to the war in Iraq. Just this morning, the city’s police superintendent was fired as part of the ongoing fallout from the killing of Laquan…

Chi-Raq, Spike Lee’s latest joint, is an update of Aristophanes’ anti-war comedy Lysistrata, otherwise known as the play where all the women of Athens stop having sex with their husbands in an effort to bring the devastating Peloponnesian War to an end. Set in the modern day south Chicago Urban war zone nicknamed…

EXCLUSIVE: Amazon Studios has set the release strategy for the Spike Lee-directed Chi-raq, which is the company’s first theatrical feature play. Amazon has set a December 4 release date and has brought in Roadside Attractions and Lionsgate to get this going with an exclusive theatrical release that is expected to…