Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts tagged as “Carl Jones”

“Hair Love” Academy Award-Winner Matthew Cherry Gets Deal from HBO Max for Animated Series “Young Love”

“Hair Love” Academy Award-Winner Matthew Cherry Gets Deal from HBO Max for Animated Series “Young Love”

By goodblacknews on July 7, 2020

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Matthew Cherry recently landed a deal with HBO Max for a 12-episode season of “Young Love,” an animated series based on the characters from Cherry and Sony Pictures Animation’s short, “Hair Love.”

Cherry will jointly run the series with Carl Jones, who is best known for his work on “The Boondocks” and “Black Dynamite.” Blue Key Entertainment’s Monica A. Young, who produced “Hair Love,” will executive produce the show alongside Lion Forge Animation’s David Steward II and Carl Reed.

Matthew Cherry (photo via Twitter)

“Hair Love” explored the relationship between a father and his daughter, Zuri, as he does her hair for the first time. “Young Love” will expand on the story of the family of father Stephen, mother Angela, daughter Zuri and her pet cat Rocky.

To quote from variety.com:

“I am beyond excited to continue telling the story of Stephen, Angela and Zuri and further explore the family dynamics of a young Black millennial family we established in our short film “Hair Love” as an animated series,” said Cherry.

“Couldn’t ask for better partners in Sony Pictures Animation and HBO Max in helping us get ‘Young Love’ out to the world.”

Read more: https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/hbo-max-young-love-matthew-cherry-sony-1234700022/

Carl Jones' Animated Musical "The Wizard Of Watts" Airs Saturday on Cartoon Network, Takes on Police Brutality

By goodblacknews on January 5, 2015
“The Wizard of Watts,” an animated musical coming to Adult Swim on Saturday, tackles police brutality during a charged time. (Credit: Adult Swim) 

LOS ANGELES — “The Wizard of Watts,” a coming animated television musical, was conceived two years ago as a big, fat gob of raucous entertainment wrapped around a nugget of racial commentary.

Then, with the musical’s animation already far underway, Ferguson, Mo., became a flash point, starting a national debate about race, overzealous policing and the need for officers to wear body cameras. Then came the phrase “I Can’t Breathe” and the broader protest against police brutality.

Suddenly, “The Wizard of Watts,” with its devastated black neighborhoods and army of pigs, took on greater weight. How the musical will be received by viewers at a racially charged cultural moment is anyone’s guess. But when it arrives on Cartoon Network’s after-hours Adult Swim block on Saturday, “The Wizard of Watts” will at the very least become one of those eerie instances of art accidentally mirroring life.

The primary villain in the Magical Land of Oz-Watts, where the story takes place, is a vicious pig clad in riot gear. Water does not neutralize this Oz villain; instead this baddie gets melted with a camcorder. “Oh, no! Not an irrefutable visual record of my illegal actions!” the anthropomorphized pig wails as he turns to mush at the musical’s climax.

Even Carl Jones, the director of “The Wizard of Watts” and one of its writers, was surprised at hitting such a cultural bull’s-eye.

“I take pride in tackling things with my gloves off, but animation takes such a long time to produce that you usually don’t end up being all that current,” he said.

Mr. Jones had noticed on social media how African-Americans were increasingly using cellphone cameras as “protection from police, like as a weapon,” he said.

“Nobody was talking about it and so I decided we had to take it on,” he said.