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“This was three years ago, that I had a note from an executive on a script that I wrote that I needed to make a character ‘Blacker’,” director Cord Jefferson said at Deadline’s Contenders Film: Los Angeles panel for American Fiction. “A lot of this is taken directly from my personal experience having worked in entertainment.”

Related: The Contenders Film: Los Angeles – Deadline’s Full Coverage

Jeffrey Wright, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown, Tracee Ellis Ross and Skyler Wright star in this scathing satire on the publishing industry and its treatment of serious works by Black writers. One of those writers is Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Wright). He travels back to his hometown of Boston to attend a book festival, but the turnout is low in favor of another book seminar with author Sinatra Golden’s (Rae) bestseller We Lives In Da Ghetto.

After finding Percival Everett’s Erasure in...

Cord Jefferson’s comedy, “American Fiction,” has won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2023 Middleburg Film Festival. Since winning the same prize at the Toronto International Film Festival, the film has been steadily rising in our combined Best Picture odds, where it’s currently in ninth place as a predicted nominee. Jefferson also received the award for Special Achievement in Filmmaking for his debut feature.

The top documentary prize went to Vanessa Hope‘s “Invisible Nation,” which follows the election and subsequent administration of Taiwan’s first female president, Dr. Tsai Ing-wen. The top award for international filmmaking went to the J.A. Bayona film “Society of the Snow,” about the 29 survivors Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which crashed in the Andes in 1972, and the extreme measures they had to take to stay alive while they were trapped.

See ‘American Fiction’ trailer: Jeffrey Wright stars in Cord Jefferson’s acclaimed directorial debut [Watch]

The festival,...

Exclusive: Cord Jefferson’s feature directorial debut American Fiction is changing up its release plan, shifting from a November 3 limited opening to December 15.

The MGM/MRC theatrical release, which stars Jeffrey Wright, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown, Tracee Ellis Ross and Skyler Wright and just won the Toronto Film Festival’s People Choice Award for the fest’s top film, is a scathing satire on the publishing industry and its treatment of serious works by Black writers. One of those writers is Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Wright). He travels back to his hometown of Boston to attend a book festival, but the turnout is low in favor of another book seminar with author Sintara Golden’s (Issa Rae) bestseller We Lives in Da Ghetto.

Originally, MGM planned to expand American Fiction on November 10 and November 17. Now following a mid-December release, an expansion is planned for December 22. Given the pic’s response...