The young boy looked sharp, decked out in an orange-brown suit. His warm smile gave no hint of the hard times he faced in Miami’s rough Liberty City neighborhood.
“That kid looks quite chill,” said Barry Jenkins of the picture of his younger self he has saved on his phone. “I’m about 6 years old, and it had to be Easter. It was difficult growing up in the circumstances I did. But in that picture, I look happy, and I look good! That young boy is unaware of the things he is going through or will go through.”
Each year, starting around Thanksgiving, culture vultures get to unwrap an early present: a raft of films, TV shows, concerts and more that fill the calendar through the end of the season. And this week, The Times is happy to be your guide to some of the most noteworthy offerings, from Oscar contenders and crowd-pleasers to holiday specials you and the family can curl up with. Read on!
He certainly had no idea when that photo was taken what the future held — that co-writing and directing a low-budget coming-of-age drama would change his life. “Moonlight” won the 2017 Oscar for best picture and earned Jenkins a nomination for best director and an adapted screenplay Oscar (with Tarell Alvin McCraney), establishing him as one of the most visionary filmmakers of his generation.
Flash-forward eight years, and that picture takes on even deeper meaning for the filmmaker, who is involved in two major studio movies opening within days of each other next month — projects that have nothing in common but their high profile.
“That little boy never would have imagined he would be in this position,” declared Jenkins, shaking his head.
Winter is coming. And it belongs to Barry Jenkins.
Premiering Dec. 20 is Jenkins’ latest directorial effort, Disney’s “Mufasa: The Lion King,” the highly anticipated, photorealistic follow-up to the 2019 blockbuster “The Lion King.”
“Mufasa” will be followed Dec. 25 by “The Fire Inside,” about Claressa “T-Rex’” Shields, the first female boxer to win an Olympic gold medal. Jenkins produced and wrote the screenplay for the film, which stars Ryan Destiny (“Grown-ish”) and Brian Tyree Henry (“Atlanta”) and is directed by cinematographer Rachel Morrison (“Black Panther”). The project has been in his orbit for years — he wrote it before “Moonlight” was released.
“The Fire Inside” and “Mufasa” represent important milestones in a triumphant career that has also had its share of rough moments, including a near-disaster that challenged his commitment to be an inspiration to others.
Seated in a conference room at Disney’s Burbank studio, Jenkins is as chill as the boy in the picture — excited but also relaxed, taking this moment in stride.
“These movies were never intended to be released within five days of each other,” he said. “It took a lot of magic for that to happen. And the fact that anyone would refer to this as ‘Barry’s winter’ — which I would never say about myself — is absolutely insane to me.”
While acknowledging that the double dip puts him in the holiday movie spotlight, being the center of attention is an uneasy position for Jenkins. Using his increasing clout to lift up artists striving to achieve their own creative dreams is far more satisfying.
As 2018’s “If Beale Street Could Talk,” based on the classic James Baldwin novel, and Amazon’s 2021 limited series “The Underground Railroad” have added new notches to his personal resume, Jenkins’ production company Pastel has planted a flag as a force in independent filmmaking.
“I didn’t think I was going to have this career from the beginning of the script of ‘The Fire Inside’ to the film being made where I could be in a position to create a halo for someone to step in and tell their story. But I hoped I would,” Jenkins said. “It was important for me to state outright at the beginning that if I enter this, I’m entering it only to a certain degree. I’m entering it also to create space for someone to step in and really manifest themselves.”
In addition to hiring Morrison to make her directorial debut with “The Fire Inside,” Jenkins and Pastel have backed a slate of critically acclaimed films, including 2020’s “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” from director Eliza Hittman; and the directorial debuts of Charlotte Wells (2022’s “Aftersun,” starring Paul Mescal) and Raven Jackson (2023’s “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt”). The company also produced HBO’s “True Detective: Night Country,” written, produced and directed by Issa López.
The story of Claressa Shields fits comfortably within Jenkins’ poetic sensitivity for telling deeply personal stories centered on complex Black characters. The first half of “The Fire Inside” unwinds much like a conventional sports movie as Shields pursues her dreams of being a top boxer as a way to lift her family out of poverty in Flint, Mich. But the core of her story is revealed when she painfully discovers that winning an Olympic medal does not end her struggles.
“Mufasa” might be considered the endeavor more outside his wheelhouse — a lavish, family-oriented spectacle with talking and singing CGI beasts that will join a franchise juggernaut that already includes a hugely popular Broadway production and the 1994 animated hit.
But “Mufasa” turns out to be just as personal for Jenkins. “Moonlight,” “If Beale Street Could Talk” and “The Underground Railroad” “are of a certain time in my life and of a certain moment in my artistic development,” he said. “But they have nothing to do with my taste growing up as a young person outside this industry before I decided to become a filmmaker.”
Jenkins regularly watched “The Lion King,” which he estimates he’s viewed more than 150 times — while babysitting his younger nephews. “It was probably the thing I had seen the most before I went to film school. When I was offered the script, reading it allowed me the chance to tap into that —who I was as a fan of movies.”
The inspiration of “The Fire Inside” was sparked by his friend, producer Elishia Holmes, who was “obsessed” with “T-Rex,” a 2015 documentary about Shields. “She asked, ‘Would you want to take a stab at this?’ I saw so many things in Claressa’s life that I could identify with — living in a place that was not the center of American culture, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps with the help of your community.”
He felt such a strong connection to Shields that he knew he could craft her story into a film. But directing it was another matter.
Said Jenkins: “So much of her story is tied up in what it means to be a young Black woman in America, and all the s— women have to go through, all of these things that has nothing to do with them in a certain way but they must wrest control of. I just felt a woman could identify with that in a way that is so immediate. I didn’t even want to approximate that.”
When he finally had the time and power to develop and produce “The Fire Inside,” he hired Morrison, whose projects as a cinematographer include 2013’s “Fruitvale Station” and 2017’s “Mudbound,” the latter of which made her the first woman to be nominated for an Oscar in the category.
“Rachel and I go way back,” Jenkins said. “There’s something about the way she carries herself. When she takes on a project, she goes deep, deep, deep. For something like this, you want someone who can use the formal aesthetic aspects to get at the spiritual, intellectual and emotional aspects of what it’s like to be Claressa Shields.”
Jenkins noted that Morrison had shot huge action set pieces for “Black Panther” as well as quieter exchanges for “Mudbound,” which made him confident she could handle the intense fight scenes and heated dialogue sequences: “When the punches are flying, it needed to feel as kinetic as a blockbuster feature film. And when there are two characters having a very tense conversation, that needs to be handled with the same care.”
Morrison, in a separate phone interview, said she was looking for a “story I could champion, and Claressa’s story was that for me. It’s so inspiring, and she’s so resilient.” She used boxing terminology to describe her professional partnership with Jenkins on the film.
“He was my cutman,” she said, referring to the person in the boxer’s corner who treats injuries during a match. “It’s a dream come true to have someone you respect at the helm of a production. It’s like hitting the lottery. I feel fortunate that many of the filmmakers I’ve worked with have seen something in me that I maybe didn’t see in myself. Barry is on that list. He was an incredible resource. It was his script, but he wanted me to breath my own life into it as well. It’s a real testament to him to be that good at writing but at the same time give the complete freedom to expand or play.”
As for “Mufasa,” the script landed in his inbox while he was locked down during the pandemic and was working on postproduction for “The Underground Railroad,” which was based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning historical novel about a runaway slave named Cora (Thuso Mbedu) and the horrors she faced in fleeing for freedom.
The timing was perfect. “I wasn’t campaigning for it, but I was thirsting for something different, completely removed from the work I had been doing up to that point,” Jenkins said. Still, he read the screenplay with “extreme skepticism. I couldn’t imagine my aesthetic voice could be so applicable to this genre and tone and scale, even though I was a huge fan.”
Part of what influenced his decision to take on the project was the near-catastrophe that brought production of “The Underground Railroad” to the verge of collapse.
“About eight weeks out from production, that show was just going to disappear — restrictions that had nothing to do with our creative intentions,” said Jenkins, his voice becoming quieter. “We were never going to get to day one because of some things that were happening with the budget, some extreme things. I had to find a way to make that show happen. Because if Barry Jenkins coming off a best picture win can’t figure out how to make a show about his ancestors because of logistics or this or that or the other, then how does the next person who looks or feels or has the same aspirations as me, how will they get access to those things as well?”
He continued: “So we made the show — 470 pages of television in 100 days. I had to work eight days a week with all of my collaborators, scouting on the weekends, writing on the weekends. It probably took a few years off my life, trying to logistically figure out a way to get that show back into a state where you could watch it and not feel any of that. That was my task. I’m a humble person, but it’s insane that we pulled off that show.”
After surviving that crisis, Jenkins was not intimidated by entering into the world of photorealistc animation with “Mufasa.” “At a certain point, the process learns to work with you. All the animators did a really good job of learning the language of me and my creative team.”
And although he is working in a genre that was previously foreign to him, the filmmaker insisted that “Mufasa” is very much a Barry Jenkins film.
“Mufasa is a character that is on a journey,” he said. “What is he feeling? What is the world leading him to feel? What are his doubts, his fears? What does he know? What does he think he knows but does not know? These are the same questions we always ask when we make our movies. And if there’s a reason why I got hired to make this movie, I think it’s because they wanted me to disappear the technology and ask those questions.”
Even though “Mufasa” and “The Fire Inside” will be in theaters at the same time, don’t expect to see Jenkins wandering around the multiplexes checking out audience reaction to his latest works: “When a movie of mine opens, my preference would be to go into the desert with no WiFi and just chill. I try to shut out as many things as I can. I don’t get any pleasure being in a theater— it just feels like you’re being judged in real time. It’s just not my thing.”
But his humility doesn’t take away from the realization that he, indeed, is having a moment.
“When I wrote ‘The Fire Inside,’ I never would have imagined that I would make a movie like ‘Mufasa’ that would open on 4,000 screens,” he said. “It wasn’t about the pay or anything other than knowing the woman’s story has to be told. I love both of them in the very same way. That’s when you sit back while you’re driving home or having your morning coffee and you think, ‘How fortunate am I?’ ”