AMATEUR is a Netflix Original and will premiere worldwide on April 6, 2018. It stars Michael Rainey Jr. (Power, Luv), Josh Charles (The Good Wife, Sports Night), Sharon Leal (Addicted, Dreamgirls), Brian White (Ray Donovan, Scandal), and Corey Parker Robinson (The Wire).
The film was a Sundance Screenwriters Lab selection and is produced by Jason Berman (The Birth of a Nation)and Chip Hourihan (Frozen River), and executive produced by former NBA All-Stars Tony Parker and Michael Finley. I can't wait to share it with the world.
14-year-old basketball phenom Terron Forte has to navigate the under-the-table world of amateur athletics when he is recruited to an elite NCAA prep school.
With college basketball's March Madness in full swing amid the ongoing FBI investigations into corruption in "amateur" athletics, AMATEUR couldn't be more timely. Here's our poster:
AMATEURstarted right here on No Film School—with a Kickstarter campaign—back when the screenplay was titled MANCHILD. Over the years, I wrote about the process — including running a Kickstarter campaign, making a short, and going to the Sundance Screenwriters Lab — but I've been offline for the past two years as we went through production, which was quite a bit more than a full-time job. Now that it's finished, I'm back.
I'm looking forward to sharing what I learned in the past two years directing AMATEUR, and to do so in-depth, we're launching a new podcast titled The First Feature:
Every episode of The First Feature will cover a different phase of production, from screenwriting, to prep, to production, to release. It will be a step-by-step guide to everything I did to get my first feature made, and the lessons I learned along the way.
Episode one is coming soon — make sure you're subscribed to the main No Film School podcast feed in iTunes, Soundcloud, or the podcasting app of your choice to get it. Feel free to add AMATEUR to your Netflix queue in the meantime as well! Finally, if you supported the film on Kickstarter way back when... thank you.
