Amazon MGM and Orion/Plan B have pushed the release date of “Nickel Boys,” and the film will now debut Dec. 13 in New York and Dec. 20 in Los Angeles, the companies announced on Wednesday. The film was originally scheduled to release Oct. 25 in New York City and Nov. 1 in Los Angeles.
Directed by RaMell Ross, who also wrote the screenplay with Joslyn Barnes, “Nickel Boys” is adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel. The film is produced by Plan B Entertainment’s Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner as well as Barnes and David Levine.
The film stars Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson as teenagers in Jim Crow-era Florida who endure barbaric abuse while wards of a juvenile reform center that Whitehead based on the notorious Dozier School, which was run by the state of Florida from 1990-2011. Over years of investigations, forensics documented nearly 100 deaths at the school and discovered almost as many unmarked graves on the school’s grounds.
Other members of the film’s cast include Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.
The film recently had its world premiere at Telluride and opening night at the New York Film Festival. In her review of the film, The Wrap’s Carla Renata wrote, “This may sound like another Black trauma porn motion picture sanctioned by Hollywood to exploit Black history for financial gain. Thankfully, through the lens of Ross, this narrative doesn’t fall into that trap we have seen for decades. Ross — mostly known for his Oscar-nominated documentary “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” — brings his unique cinematic sensibility, allowing audiences to experience this type of story from a sensory perspective.”
She added: “‘Nickel Boys’ hearkens back to a time that unfortunately still exists in some areas of America, even today. It is a hard, yet necessary watch laying out in a million ways how Black people are constantly victims of a classic case of injustice — injustice that often only happens to just us.”