Lucas Bros. Break Down the 9-Year Journey To Making ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’

After you finish watching Judas and the Black Messiah—which premiered at Sundance Film Festival to rave reviews, and opens in theaters and on HBO Max on February 12—you’ll wonder why there’s never been a movie like it before. Despite Hollywood’s obsession with the 1960s, and despite the organization’s importance to the cultural revolution, the Black Panthers have almost always been on the periphery in cinema. Maybe you’ve seen them with their guns in the background of a shot, or glowering menacingly at Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump. Few mainstream films have delivered a focused, nuanced portrayal. But as it turns out, Kenny and Keith Lucas have been trying to make that happen for nearly a decade.

You may recognize the identical twin brothers—known as the Lucas Bros—from their stand-up comedy or their brief but hilarious appearance in 22 Jump Street. Coming up, they’ll be writing and starring in a reboot of Revenge of the Nerds, as well as an untitled feature with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. But since 2012, they’ve had an idea for something different: An espionage thriller about Fred Hampton. Hampton was the real-life chairman of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party who was assassinated at the age of 21 in 1969, during a police raid involving senior FBI officials. That raid wouldn’t have been possible without a man named William O’Neal, a criminal-turned-FBI-informant, who posed as a Panther and ultimately betrayed Hampton.

You can see why the brothers were drawn to such a cinematic chapter of history, and eventually, they did get the movie made—and with an all-star cast that includes Daniel Kaluuya as Hampton and Lakeith Stanfield as O’Neal. The key was teaming up with director Shaka King, who co-wrote the script with Will Berson, and brought Black Panther‘s Ryan Coogler on as a producer. The brothers spoke to Decider about their role as “story by” writers and producers on the film, and the long journey to getting it made.

Decider: When did you first get an idea of a feature film about Fred Hampton?

Kenny Lucas: Probably around 2012, 2013. It was right after the death of Trayvon Martin. We were thinking about a film that we could write that sort of spoke to the time but wasn’t contemporary. We found out about Fred Hampton’s story sophomore year of college, and we’d taken this class in African American Studies, and there was a chapter on the 60s civil rights movement. It spoke briefly about the Panthers, and even more briefly about Fred Hampton, but once we heard about that story it was one of those stories that kind of just stays with you. Then we came across the interview by William O’Neal for [1987 civil rights docuseries] Eyes on the Prize around 2013. That’s when we were like, “Okay, that might be a proper framing device for a film.” It instantly makes it an espionage thriller, and you can avoid typical biopic tropes. We wanted to make sure that we made a movie that was—I don’t want to say entertaining, but at least a thriller. You can’t tell Fred’s full story in a traditional two-hour biopic; it’s just not enough time. You want to make sure you have it in a genre that allows you to tell the big parts of his life and get a snapshot of the message but also gets people to actually watch the film.

Walk me through your next steps, after you get the idea for the film.

Kenny: We put together a story outline with the idea that we’ll go around town, we’ll pitch it, we’ll get funding, we’ll write a script, and then we’ll make the movie.

Keith Lucas: This was based on a very poor understanding of what we read about Jordan Peele and his process with Get Out, how he pitched an idea around town and got funding to write a script. We didn’t really know how to pitch. We kept getting rejections after rejection and rejection. So we’re just like, “Something’s not right.”

Kenny: Then we got the very fortunate chance of working with Shaka King on a pilot, and we hit it off immediately. He came over to our spot in LA, and we just had like a four-hour pitch session. We’re talking to a friend about a story, and we wanted to make and he was completely blown away by our pitch. I actually think that that opened up the door for us in terms of learning how to pitch, like treating it as just a friend talking as opposed to like, thinking too much about it beforehand.

At what point did you hear that screenwriter Will Berson also had a Fred Hampton screenplay in the works?

Kenny: Will’s script was further along than anything that we had; he had like a production company attached. Casey Affleck might have been attached to it. Then I think things just fell through. We all met for dinner, and then Shaka and Will wrote a script based on the story that we were developing with Shaka, and then Shaka reached out to Ryan Coogler. Ryan and Shaka knew each other from Sundance, I think they met in 2013. Once they finished the draft, Shaka reached out to Coogler and asked if he could produce it, and he jumped on it.

Behind the scenes of Hollywood can be complicated! Can you explain for those who don’t know, what the “story by” writing credit means for you guys?

Keith: We put together the basic structure of the narrative, and as Shaka and Will worked on the script, we chimed in. When Will wrote his script, it was from the perspective of Fred, but when we put together our story outline, we went from the perspective of William O’Neal. We all thought that the interviews should play a large role in terms of shaping the narrative. It was a collaborative effort. I mean, it was just like, even with Shaka and Will writing it, all the producers chimed in as well. It was almost like 17 people working on the document.

I’ve heard that even after Lakeith Stanfield, Daniel Kaluuya, and Ryan Coogler were attached, studios were still rejecting the pitch. What were you hearing from studios?

Kenny: Shaka would inform us about the nature of those meetings, and I think the big thing was, you know, it’s a period piece about obscure Black Panther, and a socialist to boot, and that just doesn’t warrant a $26 million budget. “We can give you 13 [million], or we can give you five, but we’re not going to give you that amount of money for the subject matter.” It’s a period piece about a very obscure figure whose a socialist. That’s a tough sell. What we were confused by was that we had Charles King who put up half the money. So all we really needed was $13 million, and it was still difficult to get that.

I think a lot of that has to do with the perception of the Black Panthers as militant terrorists. It’s hard to sort of seep through that initial bias, especially with white executives. I don’t want to draw too narrow of a characterization. Even my experience with the Black Panther Party is sort of steeped in this idea that they’re militant, and my knowledge had been very scant until college, so I can’t imagine what it would be like for a white executive, whose only introduction to the Panthers, is like Forrest Gump.

You’re also producers on the film, as well as writers. Tell me about that role.

Keith: I was texting and talking to Shaka, almost weekly, throughout the duration of pre-production to production to post-production. We went to the editor a few times, and gave notes, we chimed in when we thought we needed to chime in. We had a lot of faith in Shaka, because we spent so many nights with him talking about 70s cinema, and his knowledge of direction is top-notch. Our goal was to make sure Shaka was happy, and to just sort of, make things less tense.

Kenny: Our goal was to make sure Shaka knew he had an ally. We were always going to go to bat for him, behind the scenes, in front of the camera, didn’t matter. We knew that his talent was what was going to elevate this film to a masterpiece.

Do you remember a specific instance when you went to bat for him?

Kenny: There was one scene with the mother of Jake Winters [played by Alysia Joy Powell]. Fred goes to the mother’s apartment after the violent scene, and they have that heart to heart about Jake. That plays a part in Fred’s decision not to run away from his prison sentence. Warner Bros didn’t think the scene was necessary because it slows down the pace of the film. We understood the argument and we didn’t necessarily disagree, but we also knew that Shaka was very passionate about that scene, and we were, too. It’s a scene that humanizes Jake Winter; fleshes out his character a bit more. You don’t really see things like that on film, the heart to heart between a revolutionary and a mother. It was also consistent with Deborah’s tone about being a mother during the war. Shaka was very passionate about it, and so we became very passionate about it. We defended it.

I read that some of Fred Hampton’s surviving family was on set. Did you get a chance to meet them? Did they have any concerns?

Kenny: Yeah, we got a chance to meet both Fred Hampton Jr. and Mother Akua [Akua Njeri, formerly Deborah Johnson, who is played by Dominique Fishback in the film]. She was excited and effusive about our involvement in the film, and about the final product. There were some Panthers who were very protective of Hampton’s legacy and image, which of course makes sense. It was exciting to hear their perspective about particular scenes. For instance, the final scene of the death scene. Originally, we were going to Hollywood it up—FBI agents flying through the window, just straight up FBI Hollywood shit. But Mother Akua was like, “No, it wasn’t like that. They just sort of came through the doors. It wasn’t this big set-piece. We were sleeping, they came and shot up the place.” And that was that.

Keith: Mother Akua and the rest of the Panthers drilled in us that it wasn’t that the Panthers were militant. They were disciplined. It was a very disciplined group. So we played close attention to the discipline of the Panthers. I think a lot of times, you see an image of the Panthers as a very militant Black group, but it’s never really focused on how just how disciplined they were.

How did you feel when Warner Brothers announced that all their 2021 movies would be released on HBO Max, including Judas and the Black Messiah?

Keith: At first I was just like, “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be!” But then it kind of was, “I think more people are gonna watch the film now.” We are going through a pandemic, and people are dying, you don’t want to risk the lives of people just to watch a film. So although I understand the criticism from Christopher Nolan and other major filmmakers, I also understand that it benefits the fans. It’s one of those things where you can’t really win in this situation, but all you can do is hope people like the film and don’t get COVID.

You guys have a feature coming up with Phil Lord and Chris Miller. What can you say about that?

Keith: We’ve been working on this script, for Lord and Miller—it’s actually an idea that they pitched to us while we were filming 22 Jump Street. We’ve been trying to crack this idea for a couple of years, and we finally got a good take on it. The draft is done but we still have to get it edited and send it to the studio, but we really like the idea. It’s basically a take on a Freaky Friday, or other body swap movies where you have contrasting personalities, they switch, and then shenanigans. But it’s with identical twins.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Watch Judas and the Black Messiah on HBO Max