After taking home the People’s Choice Award at this year’s Toronto International Film Fest, we’re getting our first look at the heavily buzzed about Jeffrey Wright and Issa Rae led ensemble satirical comedy, American Fiction.
Based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett, the movie sees Wright as brilliant but frustrated writer Thelonious “Monk” Ellison” who, after being told to write about “Black stuff,” takes up a pen name and writes an outlandish book called My Pafology full of horrible Black stereotypes such as “dead beat dads, rappers and crack.”
Sure enough, the book is a hit and causes Monk to have to create a fake ex-convict persona to promote the novel, which even receives an offer to be made into a movie.
Issa Rae plays a very successful fellow writer whom Monk grows to resent while Sterling K. Brown plays his recently out of the closet gay brother. Erika Alexander, Tracee Ellis Ross, Leslie Uggams, and Adam Brody round out the all-star cast.
American Fiction will open in select theaters on Dec. 15 before expanding to a wider release on on Dec. 22.
Watch the trailer below.
