2024 PREVIEW
24 The Bible Gets A New Messiah
JEYMES SAMUEL’S EPIC BREAKS THE MOULD
The power and the glory: Clarence (LaKeith Stanfield) is on the path to personal gain;
THE BOOK OF CLARENCE
OUT 19 JAN
In the beginning, Jeymes Samuel created The Harder They Fall.
With an all-Black cast, the 2021 gunslinging drama was a bold debut that put a fresh spin on the historically white domain of cinema’s Wild West, announcing the musician-turned-director as a filmmaker to watch. For his second chapter, Samuel has once again taken aim at a setting that hasn’t typically been populated by Black actors. So, as the director goes from the Old West to the New Testament, The Book Of Clarence is more than just another big swing. It’s Biblical.
Even while making The Harder They Fall, Samuel knew what he wanted to do next. “The Book Of Clarence was always in my head, since I was a child,” he says. Although he wasn’t starved of Biblical movies growing up, there was a distinct issue at the heart of them. “While I could relate to the stories, I couldn’t necessarily relate to Charlton Heston or Kirk Douglas because I never knew anyone — white or Black — that looked like that,” he explains. “In the early 2000s, I really had a desire to tell a story about the environment I grew up in, set in the Biblical era.”