'The Blackening's Dewayne Perkins on Breaking Movie Tropes and Not 'Explaining' Blackness (Exclusive)
etonline.comclassic horror film tropes, the longstanding joke that Black characters are often the first to die in horror films has become less of a gag and more of an expectation.
In a similar vein to Jordan Peele's and Nia DaCosta's , is here to turn those genre tropes on their head.The horror-comedy follows a group of Black friends who reunite for a Juneteenth weekend getaway only to find themselves trapped in a remote cabin with a twisted killer.
Forced to play by his rules, the friends soon realize, «This ain't no motherf**king game.»Tim Story directs with a screenplay and screen story written by Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins, the latter of whom created the original concept as a sketch while performing at an improv theater in Chicago. «When I initially wrote the sketch, I did not think about what it could be,» Perkins, who previously wrote for Brooklyn Nine-Nine, tells ET. «I kind of was just creating it for what it was needed for, and then, as it began to snowball into a much bigger thing, it reinforced in me that making your own stuff can really change your life in ways that you never know.»The sketch went from the Chicago stage to an even bigger stage in D.C., where Comedy Central executives were in the audience.
As 3PEAT created a web series of sketches for the network, Perkins pitched «The Blackening,» which was the network's first pick.
Read more on etonline.com