The Hate U Give Author & Director on the Journey from Twitter to Big Screen
25In 2016 there was a bidding war for Angie Thomas' very first manuscript. A little over two years later, that book is an award winning novel with a feature film adaptation - The Hate U Give. The movie features Amandla Stenberg as Starr Carter. She's a 16-year-old living in a mostly black, working-class community but attends school in a mostly white, affluent neighborhood. She manages to pull off being two different "Starrs" for the most part, behaving one way in Garden Heights and another way at school, but when she witnesses the senseless shooting of her childhood friend Khalil (Algee Smith), Starr knows she must embrace who she is and stand up for what's right.
While in Toronto for the World Premiere of The Hate U Give, I got the opportunity to sit down with Thomas and director George Tillman Jr. We discussed how Twitter helped Thomas score a publisher, deciding what to keep and cut during the adaptation process, and also a little something the cast affectionately calls Tillman's "monitor dance."
The Hate U Give hits select theaters on October 5th, expands on October 12th and is in theaters nationwide on October 19th.
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