The Jean-Michel Basquiat biopic Samo Lives, starring Kelvin Harrison Jr., has added to its cast.
Deadline reports that Danny Ramirez, Jeffrey Wright, Dane DeHaan, Kathryn Newton, Thomas Kretschmann, Lukas Gage, Yolonda Ross, Chase Sui Wonders, Priah Ferguson, Phillip Johnson Richardson, Samiya Allen-Graham, Antony Starr, Michael Angelo Covino and Samiya Allen-Graham have joined Kelvin Harrison Jr., who stars as Basquiat.
It’s worth noting that Wright also once starred as Basquiat in the 1996 biopic Basquiat. But this new film starring Harrison and directed by Luce director Julius Onah marks the first time a Baquiat biopic has been helmed by Black director.
When was the biopic first announced?
The biopic was first announced in 2022, around the time of Harrison’s latest role at that point, 18th century violinist and socialite Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges in Chevalier. Shadow and Act confirmed at the time that Endeavor Content was behind the film as financier and developer. Now, Deadline reports that Fifth Season and Macro Film Studios are producing and financing the project.
What to know so far about the plot of ‘Samo Lives’
Samo Lives is described by as “a bold, artistically-driven biographical film celebrating the incredible origins and global legacy of the New York-born, Haitian-Puerto Rican American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose seminal paintings and street art defined the Neo-expressionism arts movement in the 1980s and whose impact and relevance is still felt 33 years after his untimely death at 27.”
Deadline goes on to note, “Portraying the genius Basquiat, whose life, like his art, was vivid, complex, punctuated by the influence of of jazz, bebop and hip-hop music, the intersectionality of race, poverty/wealth/class, power and politics, with the cultural hotbed of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the late 1970s as a backdrop, is a dream come true for fast rising-star Harrison.”
Onah, who also serves as co-writer with Peter Glanz and producer, said at the time that he believed Samo Lives will celebrate the life of Basquiat in a way that hasn’t been seen before.
“Jean-Michel Basquiat redefined the idea of who ascends to the highest altitudes of the fine art world. But the complexity and richness of his experience as an artist and child of the African Diaspora has yet to be dramatized in the manner it deserves,’ said Onah in a statement received by Blavity’s Shadow and Act. “It’s an honor to work with Kelvin and my collaborators, and with Endeavor Content, to celebrate the legacy of an artist who has invited audiences everywhere to be inspired by the transformative power of art.”
Onah produces the film with John Baker, Rob Feng, and Eric Ro, as well as Macro Film Studios’ James Lopez and Charles D. King. Harrison Jr., Charles Miller, and Ossetra Films’ Sterling Brim and DC Wade are executive producers.