Regina King’s feature film directorial debut has an official release date. One Night in Miami is scheduled to hit select theaters on Christmas Day, before debuting on Amazon Prime Video on Jan. 15, 2021 (which also happens to be King’s birthday).
“To complete and release a film within the same year is a difficult task. We welcomed the challenge because we knew now was the time for this film to be released,” King said in a statement on Friday (Oct. 2). “Amazon fully supported our intention and I could not be more excited this prescient story will be seen across the globe.”
The film chronicles the night of Feb. 25, 1964, when a young Muhammad Ali (known at the time as Cassius Clay) defeated Sunny Liston to become the World Heavyweight Boxing Champion. After the fight, Ali spends the night at the Hampton House Motel where he celebrates his victory with the likes of Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, and former football player, James Brown. The film tells a fictionalized version of a true story of four men at very different points in their lives. Nine months after Ali’s boxing win, Cooke was shot to death at a Los Angeles motel. The following year in 1965, Malcolm was assassinated in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom.
One Night in Miami stars Eli Goree as Ali, Kingsley Ben-Adir as Malcolm, Aldis Hodge as Brown, and Leslie Odom Jr. as Cooke. The film was adapted from a stage play by Kemp Powers, who also penned the script.
“When I read Kemp Powers’ script, it just blew me away,” King told Variety last month. “I felt like I had never seen conversations like this on screen before.
“There was a part of me that it was like, if I was a man, I would want to play one of these roles, I would be doing whatever I can to play one of these roles,” she continued. “And just as a mother, as a niece, as a daughter of a Black man. I just felt like I wanted to tell a story or be a part of telling a story that every Black man that I know and love can see a bit of himself in.”
Watch the trailer for One Night in Miami below.