Studio's Take a chance on period film fronted by the album from Outkast

Outkast, have established themselves as a tour de force that goes beyond simply creating music. The filmic nature of their past videos combined with their aspirations to act in movies have prompted Universal and HBO Films to take a gamble on the duo leading an all star cast in the up coming Idlewild. The cast reads like a who’s who in black entertainment, but the appeal will be interesting to gauge. How well does Outkast’s eccentric taste carry over to mainstream black culture, or white culture for that matter? The film is a period piece, set in the prohibition era, but thematically and musically the film speaks to a contemporary audience. I am hard pressed to find a film that fits in this same mould. Perhaps Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, or Eddie Murphy’s Harlem Night’s. I say well done for getting the green-light from Universal, perhaps off the back of Big Boi’s performance in ATL. Also to secure the directing role for first time feature director Bryan Barber, whose stylistic music videos will lend itself to contemporising of the early 1900’s period, in the way Baz Luhrmann did with Moulin Rouge. Perhaps some of my examples here have been a bit of a reach, but I am all mixed up whether to be excited or fearful about this upcoming experiment. The marketing structure shown by the studios is also adventurous in that the success of the film will be determined largely by the success of the album, which is to be released several months earlier.