We’re still all eagerly awaiting Kendrick Lamar’s new album, but in the meantime he’s keeping busy with the announcement of a left-field new project. Lamar will serve as producer on a new live-action comedy film alongside Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park.
Per Variety, the film will “depict the past and present coming to a head when a young Black man, who is interning as a slave re-enactor at a living history museum, discovers that his white girlfriend’s ancestors once owned his.”
That’s a doozy of a plot, and seems in line with the recent Hollywood trend of addressing racial issues through genre films like Get Out. At first glance, it seems to most closely resemble 2020’s Antebellum, a horror movie starring Janelle Monáe that also focused on the trauma of slavery and historical reenactments. But, the fact that it’s a comedy means it may be more in the vein of 2018’s Sorry to Bother You, which used dark, absurdist humor to satirize gentrification and racism in the workplace.
Kendrick will be producing under the banner of PGLang, the media company he founded in 2020. Last October, Lamar announced he would be leaving TDE, his longtime label home, following the release of his next album. Presumably, PGLang will be involved in the release of his future music, although the company has gone out of its way to clarify it “is not a ‘record label.’” (That said, PGLang had a role in the release of Baby Keem’s debut album in September.)
Vernon Chatman, a longtime collaborator of Stone and Parker who also wrote for The Chris Rock Show and created The Shivering Truth, is set to pen the movie’s script. Production is slated to start this spring, though that could be impacted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Lamar has dipped his toes in the film world before, most notably as executive producer for Black Panther: The Album, which accompanied the 2018 Marvel hit and earned a slew of Grammy nominations for songs like “King’s Dead” and “All the Stars.” (He’s also made one brief, albeit memorable acting appearance in a cameo on Power.)
This announcement is also a significant one for Stone and Parker, whose projects have largely stayed within the realm of animation. Parker and Stone worked together on a few projects like Orgazmo and BASEketball in the late ‘90s that were live action, and back in 2020 it was announced they were working on another film titled Alma Junction, which some have speculated was code for a Book of Mormon adaptation.
Other details right now are scarce, but the only way this news could be more surprising is if Kendrick drops an accompanying album.