|
Listen to this article here
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
By Cormell Padillow, Jr. Staff Writer
Appearing alongside Sony Pictures’ Angry Birds 2 is a short animated film titled “Hair Love”, centered around a black father doing his daughter’s hair for the first time, and it’s the cutest short film you may ever see in your life.
Matthew Cherry, a former NFL player, is the creator of this soon to be masterpiece.
Mr. Cherry worked hard after the NFL to make a career in Hollywood. He fought his way up, becoming a creative executive at Jordan Pele’s Monkeypaw Productions company. Mr. Cherry later became the executive producer on the BlacKkKlansman and is currently a producer on TBS’ The Last OG.
Speaking about the short film, he said his purpose was to profile an “African American daughter and father, [knowing that a lot of black] little girls don’t feel represented in a lot of these projects.”
Mr. Cherry empathized “[he’s just] trying to make [children of color] feel normal and have a little black girl with kinky hair feel like she’s represented.”
This project is seeing the light after an amazing Kickstarter campaign in 2017. On the fundraising site, it quickly blasted past its initial goal of $75,000, making over $280,000 in a month.
Hair Love earned so much it set a new record for short films on the website!
For this project, Mr. Cherry teamed with a squad of black Animators. The squad consisted of Everett Downing Jr. (Up, WALL-E), Bruce W. Smith (The Proud Family), Peter Ramsey (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) and Frank Abney (Toy Story 4), who all helped direct and produced the film.
Along with its list of black animators, it has a staggering amount of black stars behind the scenes: Jordan Peele, Yara Shahidi, Gabrielle Union, Dwyane Wade, and Gabourey Sidibe are all serving as producers. As of the moment, Issa Rae is supposed to star as the voice actor of Zuri’s mother.
Hair Love will be in Theaters alongside Angry Birds 2 on August 16th.
Personally, I wish this was all on its own — a full movie.
Cormell J. Padillow is a Jr. Staff Writer for the Black Wall Street Times and is a Wichita, Kansas transplant. He is The Black Wall Street Times’ first intern and is currently a high schooler at Langston Hughes Academy for Art and Technology. Padillow has been a high school policy debater for 3-years and has competed at the National, State, and local levels. His words and pen have become the tool he uses to change the mind of the many.