Move over, Camelot.
President Obama isn’t even out of office yet and his cinematic mythos is already in full swing – in not one but two films.
The first – about Barack and Michelle falling in love – already debuted at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival: Southside With You. In the vein of Richard Linklater‘s Before Sunrise, writer/director Richard Tanne‘s Southside With You dramatizes the Obama’s first date in 1989 Chicago. You can read Variety’s review here, and watch a clip (below) of stars Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter as the would-be First Couple:
Southside With You is set to open in theaters later this summer on August 19, 2016.
The second film, currently in production, is called Barry. It focuses on Obama’s time as a college student in New York City. Newcomer Devon Terrell portrays the young Obama, while Anya Taylor-Joy (star of this year’s indie horror The Witch) has been cast in the film’s other lead. Others in the ensemble are Jason Mitchell (Straight Outta Compton‘s Easy-E) and Ellar Coltrane (Boyhood). No release date has been set.
While we’ll have to wait and see how these actually turn out, it’s not too hard to imagine the snide mockery that would’ve followed a 2008 movie about George W.’s and Laura’s early days in Midland, TX (regardless of how well they may have been made).
But for liberals and progressives, the Obamas are the closest thing to royalty (or, at least, the Kennedys) as they have, so there will no doubt be a market (possibly even including conservatives who are game for a good old snarky “hate watching”) for these favorable treatments of the Obamas – and likely more.
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