University of Kansas Professor Kevin Willmott’s latest film was released last month on all leading digital platforms including Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, iTunes and the national Video on Demand platform on cable television. Willmott, a successful director, actor, writer, and producer fresh off his co-writing credit on Spike Lee’s Chiraq, has made a name for his satirical films rift with social commentary. His newest film, Destination: Planet Negro, takes him back to his roots.
This spoof turns history on its head as ’30s Jim Crow laws force African Americans to leave Earth and colonize Mars.
It’s 1939 and black leaders W.E.B DuBois and George Washington Carver decide that segregated America is no place for African Americans, so they devise a secret plot to solve the “Negro Problem” by way of a rocket ship to Mars. Carrying an improbable crew of three, the spacecraft vaults into a time warp, landing its brave scientist-astronauts in modern day Kansas City. And, though the astonished explorers discover developments like young men with drooping pants and the election of a Black president, Destination: Planet Negro reveals that things may not have changed as much as we think they have.
The film stars Willmott as Dr. Warrington Avery, Trai Byers (“Empire”, Selma, “90210”) as B-12, Tosin Morohunfola (The Association, “Chicago Med”) as Dr. Race Johnson and Danielle Cooper as Beneatha Avery. Co-stars include Wes Studi (“Penny Dreadful”, A Million Ways to Die in the West) and Walter Coppage (Jayhawkers, the Association.)
