Only Regina Hall Will Understand The New SHAFT
Hot off the success of Girls Trip, Regina Hall is joining the Shaft reboot, playing a former flame of our titular Blax detective (played again by Samuel L. Jackson), and mother to New Wave Shaft, portrayed by Jessie T. Usher.
Tim Story is rebooting the famous Ernest Tidyman creation yet again, hoping to bring some of that Ride Along glitz to the genre icon. This latest iteration casts Usher as a geeky FBI agent who, after his friend dies suspiciously, launches his own investigation, reluctantly enlisting help from his estranged father (who's apparently stuck in the '80s?). I bet Samuel L. busts out the Kangol hats for this one.
It's hard to tell from that logline if this is going to be played straight, or is going to be a dumber version of the Black Dynamite parody of Blaxploitation, which will surely do nothing but piss this writer off. John Singleton's 2000 redux was actually pretty good, and played the whole thing straight. Right now, I'm totally unsure as to why we need this weird studio comedy style re-imagining of Richard Roundtree's ass-kicking icon (as it feels oddly condescending in concept), outside of satisfying our current crippling IP addiction.
Anyway, Shafted Harder (or whatever the fuck) comes out June 14, 2019. Watch it. Or don't. It's up to you, really.
