The trailer for Spike Lee’s new movie, Chi-Raq, has been released a month before its debut on Amazon. Amazon has been striving to provide for original content pretty hard within the last year including its hit show, The Man in The High Castle. Chi-Raq will be one of the site’s original films.
Based on the ancient classic Lysistrata, Spike changes the Greek setting to the streets of South Chicago. Like the original story, it will be about women withholding sex from sexual intimacy from men to put an end to the out-of-control violence.
The movie has been gaining controversy ever since the beginning of production with criticisms coming from the ranks of the Chicago city council and, according to social media,Chicago residents as well. Despite the controversy, the trailer seems to have attracted a positive reception from some outlets and certainly did the job of catapulting the film’s buzz before its anticipated release, whether positive or negative.
The movie has an astonishing cast of A-listers reminiscent of Spike’s breakout era including Samuel Jackson, Wesley Snipes, Angela Bassett, Jennifer Hudson, and the trailer even has a clip of Dave Chappelle with a hilarious one liner. Nick Cannon has been cast as what appears to be a drill rapper caught up in the city’s extreme violence. Style-wise, it seems more reminiscent of 1980s Spike versus his work from the 1990s and 2000s, but with an updated feel.
Watch the trailer for it here.
