Chadwick Boseman‘s final movie is eventually set to arrive on Netflix. The tragic and shocking death of the Black Panther star on Friday has rocked Hollywood and his countless fans around the world, with social media being full of tributes to the 43-year-old actor, including from many of his Marvel co-stars. As confirmed in Boseman’s family’s statement on his passing, he had been suffering from colon cancer for the past four years. However, choosing to keep his diagnosis private, he continued working hard during this time, shooting a total of seven films, including two movies that have yet to be released.
The final project that he shot prior to his death is Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, an upcoming Netflix project directed by George C. Wolf and based on the play by Pulitzer Prize winning writer August Wilson. Viola Davis stars as real-life blues icon Ma Rainey, with the drama taking place over the course of a single recording session.
Here’s the synopsis:
“Chicago, 1927. A recording session. Tensions rise between Ma Rainey, her ambitious horn player and the white management determined to control the uncontrollable “Mother of the Blues”.”
Boseman plays Levee in the pic, an ambitious trumpeter who seeks to make his own mark on the music industry and stirs up the various tensions in the group to the point where all sorts of unspoken truths, lies and stories spill out, forever changing the course of their lives. The film was shot last summer, from June to August, and the rest of the cast includes Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo, Michael Potts and Taylour Paige.
Netflix has yet to give Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom a release date, so we’re not sure if it’s set to arrive later this year or in 2021. The last of Chadwick Boseman‘s movies to be released prior to his death though was Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, the acclaimed Vietnam War-themed drama, which dropped on the streaming service back in June. The other of his projects yet to come out, meanwhile, is Yasuke, based on the real-life story of the eponymous African samurai. It’s currently unknown how and when that one’s being released, though.