One Night in Miami is a 2020 drama film directed by Actress Regina King (in her feature directorial debut), from a screenplay by Kemp Powers based upon his stage play of the same name. It stars Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, and Leslie Odom Jr.. The film tells a fictionalized story of Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke as the group celebrate Clay’s surprise title win over Sonny Liston in a Miami hotel room in February 1964.
The film had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 7, 2020, this is the first film directed by an African-American woman to be selected in the festival’s history.
Via Deadline:
Regina King and the stars of her feature directorial debut One Night In Miami piped into the Venice Film Festival this afternoon to discuss the very timely picture that’s inspired by a real-life 1964 meeting of friends Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke. The press screening I attended this morning was as full as is possible under social distancing protocols and there was a healthy dose of applause as the credits rolled.
The events of the film take place the night that Clay (before he became Muhammad Ali) defeated Sonny Liston to take over the title of World Heavyweight Boxing Champion. At the Hampton House Motel in one of Miami’s historically black neighborhoods, he celebrates victory with three of his closest friends. The work originated with playwright and screenwriter Kemp Powers (Soul), whose eponymous stage play imagined the passionate, topical conversation between the men.
Powers, who was also virtually present in Venice today, said he was inspired to write One Night In Miami after reading a paragraph in in Mike Marqusee’s book on Ali and the 60s, Redemption Song, which made fleeting reference to the four men gathering. “It was like discovering the Black Avengers,” Powers enthused.
The quartet in the film addresses the raging social injustice of the time and their own responsibilities. Given the current situation in the U.S., there is a clear relevance to today’s world.
King noted, “For black Americans, unfortunately, those conversations were happening 60 years ago and are also happening now. When we started filming it, did we know that we’d be in this powder keg moment that we’re in right now? Absolutely not. But the conversations were relevant. It feels like one of those things where it was meant to be, even though our intention was not to have it happen when an uprising is going on in our country.”
Given the COVID-related closures, King said there were initial thoughts of pushing the film’s release back, but then “George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery had been murdered and… we were like, ‘This needs to happen now, this needs to come out now’.” One Night In Miami will go from Venice to Toronto and then Zurich. Amazon Studios has global rights and a theatrical release is planned King recently told Deadline, but a date has not been set.
When it does release, said King, “Maybe we’re lucky and we’re going to have the opportunity to be a piece of art out there that moves the needle in the conversation for real transformative change.”
Asked about being a black female director and whether this film can help open doors, King said it could depend on the reception. “That’s how things seems to work. If a woman gets a shot and does not succeed, it shuts things down for years to come. I am so grateful for our film to be part of the festival, but I really, really want it to perform well. There’s so much talent out there. So if One Night In Miami gets it done here, you’ll get to see a lot more of us.”
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