Action films have dominated box offices and streaming services in recent years. Unfortunately, save for a few outliers like Black Panther and Black and Blue, they’ve all been male-dominated and extremely white. Twenty years after her stunning debut, Love & Basketball, Gina Prince-Bythewood is ready to lend her vision to the action genre, while centering Black women.
Based on Greg Rucka’s visionary comics, Prince-Bythewood Netflix’s blockbuster, The Old Guard, follows a ragtag group of mercenaries led by the stoic and lethal Andy (Charlize Theron). Though they are weapons masters with exemplary fighting skills, the group also has a secret. They are immortals — people who’ve walked the globe for centuries aiding in pivotal wars and events.
The immortals’ tightly held secret is exposed just as another immortal awakens. U.S. marine Nile Washington (If Beale Street Could Talk’s Kiki Layne) finds herself horrified and adrift when she rouses from a mission that should have ended her life. Out of her element, she must learn to trust Andy and the rest of the immortals on her new journey.
Ahead of The Old Guard’s debut, ZORA chatted with Prince-Bythewood about taking the reins in Hollywood, and why seeing Black women on-screen means everything to her.
ZORA: You’ve done Love & Basketball, Disappearing Acts, The Secret Life Of Bees, and Beyond the Lights. How long have you wanted to do an action film?
Gina Prince-Bythewood: For a very long time. I love the genre, and I love where it has gone in the last couple of years with Black Panther and Logan. Action films are more action dramas that have all the elements that you love. I really wanted to be a part of it. The reality of Hollywood is that very few women get the opportunity. For a long time, it was just this dream that I talked about. Then Wonder Woman happened, and Patty Jenkins killed it. That opened the door for women to be considered. Skydance, who had the property of The Old Guard, was very intentional on finding a female director and cited Love & Basketball and Beyond the Lights as two films that they loved. They wanted what I brought to those films.
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