 | |
| Type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Entertainment |
| Founded | 2005 |
| Headquarters | |
Key people | Jeff Clanagan, CEO, Codeblack Films Quincy Newell, EVP, Codeblack Films Candice Wilson, Acquisitions & Development Executive Director, Codeblack Films |
| Products | Motion pictures |
| Parent | Lionsgate Films (Lionsgate) |
| Website | Official website |
Codeblack Films is an American entertainment company. Codeblack focuses on films targeting African-American audiences.
Codeblack Enterprises was founded by Jeff Clanagan in 2005, who became CEO of the company. [1] Originally focused on direct-to-video releases, Codeblack entered into an agreement with 20th Century Fox for film distribution. [2] The multi-picture deal with Fox Faith was to produce six original films targeting the African-American faith-based market. The first two productions were film adaptations of the 1980s Off-Broadway gospel musical hit Mama, I Want to Sing! and the popular play, A Good Man is Hard to Find.[ citation needed ]
Codeblack Enterprises entered a distribution deal with Lionsgate in 2012 forming Codeblack Films under Lionsgate. [3] [4] [1] Codeblack's first film release under Lionsgate was Kevin Hart's stand-up special Let Me Explain. [5] [6] That same year, Shaquille O'Neal's All Star Comedy Jam was released through Codeblack and Lionsgate. [7] Codeback released Woman Thou Art Loosed: On the 7th Day as a limited release to 102 AMC theaters in April 2012. [8]
In 2013, Codeblack acquired the rights to produce films from the Flyy Girl book trilogy by Omar Tyree. [9] [10] It was later announced that Sanaa Lathan would be starring as Tracy Ellison in the movie adaptation written by Geoffrey S. Fletcher and Nicole Jefferson-Asher and produced by Effie T. Brown. [11] [12] [13] Codeblack released Why We Laugh: Funny Women, a film about female comedians narrated and produced by Joan Rivers, in 2013. [14] That same year, it acquired Frankie & Alice , a drama starring Halle Berry, after its delayed release. [15] In April 2013, Codeblack acquired the theatrical rights of Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, a documentary about social activist Angela Davis. [16] Also in 2013, Codeblack released the film The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete , a story of two children on their which have been abandoned by their drug-addicted caretaker. The movie was directed by George Tillman Jr. and starred Jennifer Hudson, Anthony Mackie and Jeffrey Wright. [5] It debuted at the Sundance Film Festival that year. [17]
Codeblack released Repentance , a psychological thriller about a life coach who is abducted by one of his clients, in February 2014. The film was directed by Philippe Caland, who wrote the script alongside Shintaro Shimosawa and worked with Nina Yang Bongiovi to produce the film. [18] The film Addicted was released by Codeblack in 2014. It was shown on a limited 846 screens. [19] Codeblack signed an agreement with Times Media Films in October 2014 to distribute its films to South Africa. [3] [20]
In March 2015, Lionsgate's Codeblack Films entered an agreement with distributor Eagle Films to distribute all films produced or co-produced by Codeblack in the Middle East and North Africa. [3] In March 2016, Codeblack's parent company, Lionsgate, announced a partnership with Kevin Hart and his company Hartbeat Digital to establish Laugh Out Loud, a video on demand service. Jeff Clanagan. Codeblack's CEO, became president of Hartbeat Digital and Laugh Out Loud. [21] [22] That same month, Codeblack produced a game show series on Instagram similar to "The Newlywed Game" called "The Perfect Match" before the release of the film, The Perfect Match. [23] In September 2016, Codeblack announced that it was partnering with Queen Latifah's Flavor Unit Entertainment to co-produce and co-finance several films including The Love Playbook: Rules for Love, Sex, and Happiness based on the book by La La Anthony. [24]
In April 2017, the first trailer was released for All Eyez on Me , a biopic about rapper Tupac Shakur distributed by Codeblack which would be released in June on what would have been his 46th birthday. The movie was featured as the closing film at the 2017 American Black Film Festival. [25] [26]
Sanaa McCoy Lathan is an American actress. As a voice actress, from 2009 to 2013, she voiced Donna Tubbs in The Cleveland Show and in all concurrent and subsequent Family Guy appearances. She has starred in many films, including The Best Man (1999) and its 2013 sequel, The Best Man Holiday. Her other film credits include Love & Basketball (2000), Brown Sugar (2002), Alien vs. Predator (2004), Something New (2006), The Family That Preys (2008), Contagion (2011), and Now You See Me 2 (2016).
Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation, also known as Lionsgate, is a Canadian-American entertainment company. It was formed by Frank Giustra on July 10, 1997,domiciled in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and is currently headquartered in Santa Monica, California, United States. In addition to its flagship Lionsgate Films division, the company contains other divisions such as Lionsgate Television and Lionsgate Interactive. It owns a variety of subsidiaries such as Summit Entertainment, Debmar-Mercury, and Starz Inc.
Lionsgate Films is an American film production and film distribution studio, headquartered in Santa Monica and founded in Canada, and is the flagship division of Lionsgate Entertainment. It is the largest and most successful mini-major film studio in North America. It focuses on foreign and independent films and has distributed various commercially successful film series, including The Hunger Games, Rambo, Divergent, The Punisher, John Wick, Saw, Madea, Blair Witch, Now You See Me, Hostel, The Expendables, Sinister, The Twilight Saga and Step Up.
Kevin Darnell Hart is an American stand-up comedian and actor. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Hart began his career by winning several amateur comedy competitions at clubs throughout New England, culminating in his first real break in 2001 when he was cast by Judd Apatow for a recurring role on the TV series Undeclared. The series lasted only one season, but he soon landed other roles in films such as Paper Soldiers (2002), Scary Movie 3 (2003), Soul Plane (2004), In the Mix (2005), and Little Fockers (2010).
Omar Rashad Tyree is an African-American novelist.
Summit Entertainment is an American film production and distribution company. It is a label of Lionsgate Films, owned by Lionsgate Entertainment and is headquartered in Santa Monica, California.
Jamal "Gravy" Woolard is an American actor and rapper. He is best known for portraying musician The Notorious B.I.G. in the film Notorious, and, as a supporting character, in the Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez on Me.
Pantelion Films is an American film production company that was created in 2010 and based in Santa Monica, California. The studio's goal is to bring wider theatrical distribution of movies aimed at Latino audiences. It is backed by Televisa and Lionsgate. It has made theatrical relationships with movie exhibition chains including Regal Entertainment Group, AMC Theatres, Cinemex, and Cinemark. The studio's first film was 2011's From Prada to Nada, which Lionsgate and Grupo Televisa announced it had commissioned for a television series that did not materialize in 2012.
Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain is a 2013 American stand-up comedy concert film featuring Kevin Hart's 2012 performance at Madison Square Garden. It was released in theaters on July 3, 2013. The film was directed by Leslie Small and Tim Story, produced by Hartbeat Productions, and distributed by Summit Entertainment and Codeblack Films.
Flyy Girl is young adult/new adult literature and an urban fiction book written by Omar Tyree. The book was originally published by Mars Productions in 1993 and republished by Simon & Schuster for adults in 1996. The novel is regarded to be the genesis of the modern urban-fiction/street-lit movement that would later gain momentum in 1999 with the publication of Sister Souljah's The Coldest Winter Ever.
Point Grey Pictures, Inc. (PGP) is a Canadian independent film and television production company.
Repentance is a 2013 psychological horror film written and directed by Philippe Caland, co-written by Shintaro Shimosawa and Yusuf Hassan and starring Forest Whitaker, Anthony Mackie, Mike Epps, Nicole Ari Parker and Sanaa Lathan. Repentance is the first major film production of CodeBlack Films since CodeBlack's merger with Lions Gate Entertainment in May 2012. The film had its limited release in US theaters on February 28, 2014.
Now You See Me 2 is a 2016 American heist thriller film directed by Jon M. Chu from a screenplay by Ed Solomon and a story by Solomon and Peter Chiarelli. It serves as a sequel to 2013's Now You See Me and the second installment in the Now You See Me series. The film stars an ensemble cast that includes Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Daniel Radcliffe, Lizzy Caplan, Jay Chou, Sanaa Lathan, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman. The plot has the Four Horsemen and their leader Dylan Rhodes recruited by Walter Mabry, a criminal mastermind, to steal a data chip.
All Eyez on Me is a 2017 American biographical drama film about rapper Tupac Shakur, directed by Benny Boom and written by Jeremy Haft, Eddie Gonzalez and Steven Bagatourian. Titled after Shakur's 1996 fourth studio album as well as the song of the same name, the film stars Demetrius Shipp Jr. as Shakur with Kat Graham, Lauren Cohan, Hill Harper and Danai Gurira in supporting roles, with Jamal Woolard reprising his role as Christopher “The Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace from Notorious (2009).
Demetrius Shipp Jr. is an American actor. He portrayed rapper and actor Tupac Shakur in the 2017 biopic All Eyez on Me, as well as gang leader Tyrone Moore in All American.
Love Beats Rhymes is an American musical drama film directed by RZA. The film stars Azealia Banks as a 25-year-old rapper from Staten Island, New York who wants to pursue a music career. The film also stars Lorraine Toussaint, Jill Scott, Lucien Laviscount, MC Jin, Hana Mae Lee, John David Washington and Common. The film was released on December 1, 2017 by CodeBlack Films and Lionsgate.
Erik Feig is an American film executive and producer. In May 2019, Feig launched PICTURESTART with backing from Warner Bros., Endeavor Content, and Bron Studios and access to Scholastic Corporation's IP. He served as co-president of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, and president of Summit Entertainment. He has produced, supervised and originated the production of Academy Award-winning films including La La Land and The Hurt Locker, along with book adaptations and films geared toward the youth market, including The Twilight Saga, The Hunger Games series, Divergent series, Red series and Step Up series. According to The New York Times, "Feig has built a reputation among book authors for cinematic adaptations." As of 2017, films he has supervised or produced have collectively grossed over $12 billion at the box office worldwide.
Fast Color is a 2018 American superhero drama film directed by Julia Hart from a screenplay by Hart and Jordan Horowitz. Horowitz produced the film along with Mickey Lidell and Pete Shilaimon. It stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Lorraine Toussaint, Saniyya Sidney, Christopher Denham and David Strathairn, and tells the story of Ruth (Mbatha-Raw), a woman with supernatural powers on the run from law enforcement and scientists who want to study and control her.
Borderlands is an upcoming American science fiction action comedy film directed by Eli Roth, from a screenplay written by Craig Mazin and Roth, based on the video game series of the same name developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K, and stars an ensemble cast featuring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, and Jamie Lee Curtis. The film is produced by Ari and Avi Arad, and Erik Feig, under their Arad Productions and Picturestart company banners, respectively.
Matt Lieberman is an American screenwriter. He has written the screenplays and stories for Scoob!, The Addams Family, The Christmas Chronicles and its sequel, and Free Guy. He is represented by Creative Artists Agency and Lit Entertainment Group.
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