

A young black man named Bigger Thomas takes a job working for a highly influential Chicago family, a decision that will change the course of his life forever.
Acting
Ashton Sanders embodies Bigger's panic with devastating restraint.
Direction
Rashid Johnson's modernized Richard Wright keeps the claws in.

Director
Rashid Johnson
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Johnson relocates Wright's 1940 novel to 2019 Chicago, keeping the Black Lives Matter era's surveillance state but losing the original's Communist politics entirely.
Suzan-Lori Parks wrote the screenplay; she kept the novel's infamous rat opening but made Bigger a punk drummer—Johnson's addition, linking rebellion to sound.