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Billboard: “The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart: Frank Marshall directed and executive produced this doc, which is built around a fresh interview with the trio’s sole surviving member, Barry Gibb, as well as archival interviews with his late twin brothers Robin and Maurice Gibb. The doc shares its title with the 1971 classic that was the trio’s first No. 1 hit on the Hot 100.”

Read Full Story on Billboard.com

Belgravia and Star Trek actress Alice Eve has signed to star in The Queen Mary, the first in a planned trilogy of horror films inspired by the hauntings on-board the infamous ocean liner.

As previously revealed, Gary Shore (Dracula Untold) will direct off of a screenplay written by Stephen Oliver, Tom Vaughan, and Shore.

Plot details are being kept under wraps but the film is inspired by stories of hauntings on the famed ocean liner that is now permanently docked in Long Beach, CA. The multi-storied ocean liner, named Time Magazine’s most haunted place in the world, receives two million visitors each year.

The project has been developed and produced by Brett Tomberlin of Imagination Design Works, along with Nigel Sinclair and Nicholas Ferrall of White Horse Pictures (The Woman in Black), Thorsten Schumacher and Lars Sylvest for Rocket Science (Resistance) and Jason Newmark and Laurie Cook of Newscope.

Mali Elfman is producing alongside Mark Tomberlin and Jordan Rambis who are executive producing as part of Imagination Design Works. Rocket Science is on board to fully finance and represent worldwide distribution rights.

Eve most recently starred in Julian Fellowes Downton Abbey follow-up Belgravia and is currently shooting The Power for Amazon.

“We were immediately obsessed with Gary’s intelligent and twisted multi-film take on a great American legend and could not be more excited working with an extremely gifted actor in bringing this story to audiences around the world,” said Tomberlin.

Shore added: “I’m fascinated, obsessed and disturbed by this ship – there’s something very dark and human about her. It’s a stylistic tightrope between reverence and horror.”

Tobin Armbrust will executive-produce together with White Horse’s Cassidy Hartmann. Andy Trapani, Brian Gilbert, and Steve Sheldon of Epic Entertainment Group will also serve as executive producers. White Horse Pictures’ Jeanne Elfant Festa will co-executive-produce. Tom Vaughan will co-produce.

Also executive-producing are Gianluca Chakra and Hisham Alghanim of Front Row Filmed Entertainment, which has also backed development.

Eve is represented by Independent Talent Group, CAA, and Silver Lining Entertainment. Shore is represented by WME, 42 and Sloane, Offer, Weber and Dern. Vaughan is repped by Mark Hartogsohn and Danny Toth and The Gersh Agency, and Kailey Marsh at Brillstein Partners. Attorney Cliff Lo and Alexa Pagonas of Michael Black Management negotiated the Queen Mary rights deal on behalf of Imagination Design Works.

Barry Gibb returns to the Bee Gees’ music via Nashville

For his latest album, Barry Gibb teamed up with some of Nashville’s biggest stars to record “Greenfields,” in which they perform some of The Bee Gees’ greatest hits. The last surviving Gibb brother talked with “CBS This Morning” co-host Anthony Mason about returning to their catalogue, and about the new HBO Max documentary about the group, “The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” which he says is too painful for him to watch.

View the Segment on CBS News

The Bee Gees created music for nearly five decades, but their legacy is often reduced to a brief period in the late Seventies when they became the most famous disco band on the planet thanks to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

So when director Frank Marshall and producer Nigel Sinclair approached Barry Gibb for a documentary, the last living Bee Gee asked what they had in mind. “We said we wanted to reintroduce him to his audience, because time has passed,” Sinclair tells Rolling Stone. “He said, ‘If you guys will do that, I’ll give you everything.’”

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, out December 12th on HBO, aims to tell the band’s whole saga from start to finish. It features rare footage and new interviews with Barry Gibb from his home in Miami, as well as interviews with his late brothers Robin and Maurice. Much of the footage was supplied by the Gibb family, who gave Marshall complete creative independence. “When we talked to [Maurice’s widow] Yvonne Gibb, she remembered that they had some eight-millimeter footage that was in a shoebox under a bed somewhere,” Marshall explains. “Talking to the family was really important.”

The film chronicles the band’s upbringing in Australia, their relationship with manager Robert Stigwood, their rise to fame in the late Sixties in England, and their global revival in the late Seventies with Saturday Night Fever, which stayed at Number One on the Billboard Album Chart for an astonishing 24 consecutive weeks. The group’s backing band and producers weigh in on the group’s creative process: keyboardist Blue Weaver tears up recalling how he and Barry came up with the melody for “How Deep Is Your Love,” while producers Albhy Galuten and Karl Richardson recreate the famous drum loop on “Stayin’ Alive.” “They went to the top of the mountain with the Bee Gees,” Sinclair says. “Then, as it happens with bands and engineers and producers, they moved on to another life. They were reliving this moment.”

Marshall also interviewed members of brother bands, including Oasis’ Noel Gallagher and Nick Jonas of the Jonas Brothers. They breakdown the joys of making music with family members, and the brutal tensions that comes with it. “When you’ve got brothers singing, it’s like an instrument that nobody else can buy,” Gallagher says. “You can’t go buy that sound in a shop.”

“We could have done a whole film just on Noel Gallagher’s interview,” Sinclair says. “Of all the projects that we’ve worked on, it was the one where everybody you asked would say yes. However famous people are, there’s all sorts of reasons why they don’t want to be interviewed. Eric Clapton doesn’t [usually] give interviews, so that was amazing.” Justin Timberlake also appears, praising the band to such extreme measures that he promises the cameramen he’s not high. “It was so fun to talk to him, I forgot we were doing the interview,” Marshall laughs. “He was so enthusiastic about them and their musical gifts.”

The film also delves into unpleasant moments in their career, from Robin getting booed offstage after his first solo show in 1970 to the backlash they faced following Disco Demolition Night in Chicago’s Comiskey Park nine years later. “Let’s all grow up, we’re just a pop group,” Barry urges in an archival interview. “I don’t think there’s any reason to chalk us up because we existed in the Seventies. And we would like to exist in the Eighties — does anybody mind if we exist in the Eighties? Thank you.” (In 1988, the band casually summed up their hatred of “Stayin’ Alive” to Rolling Stone: “We’d like to dress it up in a white suit and gold chains … and set it on fire.”)

However, the fiasco of the 1978 film Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band — starring the Bee Gees, Peter Frampton, and Steve Martin — isn’t mentioned at all in the documentary. “There was no reason to put it in,” Marshall says. Adds Sinclair: “We deal with other things that were challenges and some humiliating things that happened to them, but their experience there didn’t move their creativity forwards.”

In addition, the film only briefly touches on the Eighties and Nineties. “We do deal with it the last 10 minutes of the film,” Sinclair says, alluding to footage from their incredible One Night Only tour in 1997. “But we were trying to pick the mountaintop moments.”

The death of Maurice Gibb in 2003 and Robin Gibb in 2012 means that it now falls squarely on Barry to keep the legacy alive. He plays Bee Gees classics on occasional solo tours and in January he’s releasing the LP Greenfields: The Gibb Brothers Songbook, where he revisits many of their most iconic songs as duets with country stars. But memories of his brothers are never far from his head. “I honestly can’t come to terms with the fact that they’re not here anymore,” he says near end of the movie, staring out at the Miami skyline. “I’d rather have them all back here than no hits at all.”

View this story on Rolling Stone

Wherever you currently land on the subject of the Bee Gees (Forgotten glitter gods? Perpetual punchline?), director Frank Marshall’s thorough and beautifully appreciative HBO documentary, “The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” will get you where you need to be — which, I can practically promise, is a sublime state of awe.

An exemplary lesson in how to make a revealing rockumentary, “The Bee Gees” (premiering Saturday) will satisfy lifelong skeptics and loyal fans. It’s less of the usual tract (we had them all wrong!) and more of a reckoning with the profound degree of artistry and accomplishment that should be the last word on any Bee Gees story. The movie is also a unique consideration of the phenomenon of rise and fall, and how one learns to live with it.

Spending almost no time on a deep probe of the biographical 1950s family dynamics of the Gibbs of Brisbane, Australia, it instead heads straight into the recurring theme of success and fame as a matter of raw determination: Hugh Gibb, the father of Barry and twins Robin and Maurice, was a musician who simply believed his sons’ harmonizing vocals and knack for songwriting deserved as much or more attention than, say, the Beatles. He wrote to Beatles manager Brian Epstein and offered up his cheerfully ambitious offspring; Epstein handed them over to a subordinate, Robert Stigwood, and the rest is pop-music history.

But what kind of history and why? This is where Marshall’s film succeeds. With archival footage and music cues that will invariably lure you out of your chair (or have you choked up during those achingly perfect chord progressions in the band’s ballads), “The Bee Gees” insists the Gibbs’s musicianship and prolonged success is as impressive as anyone in the rock pantheon. The film also has an adept awareness that such statements are always up for careful review and heated debate. No greater authority than Barry Gibb himself, the band’s sole survivor at 74, can confirm the ways in which celebrity stories, and images, change with time.

“I am beginning to recognize the fact that nothing is true,” he says at the film’s opening. “Nothing. It’s all down to perception. My immediate family is gone, but that’s life. It’s the same thing in every family, that someone will be left in the end. [At] this time in life, I have fantastic memories, but everybody’s memories are different. So they’re just my memories, you know?”

In other words, “The Bee Gees” is years too late to present the fullest possible account, relying on past documentary interviews with Maurice (who died in 2003) and Robin (who died in 2012) to supplement the narrative of a band that continually recalibrated itself to radio’s whims. Inspired by the work of others (including Otis Redding and the Mills Brothers) in a time when appropriation was just part of the game, their greatest gift to music could have started and ended with the writing and recording of their much-covered 1967 hit ballad “To Love Somebody.”

The footage and music from the band’s initial dalliance with fame is as much or more fascinating than the “Saturday Night Fever” superstardom that lurked ahead. As noted by Coldplay singer Chris Martin, who considers himself something of an expert on pop-star backlash, the Bee Gees were among the first groups to understand that long careers in the recording industry come with stretches that are as low as any high. Ego clashes were complicated by familial resentments. Oasis’s Noel Gallagher observes that making music with family members is “the greatest strength and the greatest weakness you can have.” Bee Gees fan Nick Jonas agrees: “Brothers, in general, is a very complicated thing.” One wishes the movie went even more deeply on this — the depth with which Barry, Robin and Maurice loved each other comes through; the darker moments often don’t.

Robin briefly went solo, and wouldn’t talk to Barry. (The good-humored Maurice says he always had to be the “Mr. Fix-It” between the two.) The 1970s dawned with another big hit (“How Can You Mend a Broken Heart”) but, even reunited, the brothers yearned to find a new sound. The supportive Stigwood, who by now had his own label at Atlantic, urged the Bee Gees to do what his other big client, Eric Clapton, had done — move to Miami and experiment.

“Those guys were actually an R&B band that hadn’t really worked that out yet,” Clapton observes.

It is here that “The Bee Gees” makes an enlightening argument for the kind of musicianship that happens at the studio control board. It’s not so much about manipulation as it is a startling degree of precision and perfectionism. “Jive Talkin’,” a revelatory new Bee Gees hit in 1975, was divined from the rhythm produced by car tires speeding across a Miami bridge. Working with producer Arif Mardin on the song “Nights on Broadway,” Barry was pushed to improvise near the song’s end, eliciting a sonic falsetto he never knew he had. (“Blamin’ it all! Blame it on the nights on Broadway!”) That, more than anything, put the Bee Gees’s stamp on popular culture — and again borrowed heavily, the film notes, from such bands as the Spinners and Stylistics.

Their new sound leads, of course, to a level of fame and riches the brothers never imagined. Stigwood asked the band to add some songs to the soundtrack of a movie he was producing about the flourishing disco scene in Brooklyn. To persuade the studio to release “Saturday Night Fever” in as many theaters as possible, Stigwood promised to attach a No. 1 hit to it in advance, leaving it to the Bee Gees to come up with “the best love song you’ve ever written.” They delivered, with “How Deep Is Your Love,” followed by “Stayin’ Alive” and “Night Fever,” on a double album that eventually sold 45 million copies.

In the relentless pursuit of hits, the Gibbs were remarkably unfazed by popularity. Rather than reject it or treat it in an aloof manner, they always seemed to acquiesce to it. The point, after all, is to be adored.

Living in their own glitzy bubble, they were completely unaware, while performing in Oakland on July 12, 1979, that a belligerent rock DJ in Chicago, Steve Dahl, had summoned tens of thousands of listeners to a White Sox doubleheader at Comiskey Park for a “Disco Demolition Night” rally. Fans could get into the game for 98 cents if they brought a disco album to add to a heap that were to be blown to smithereens on the outfield. Plenty of those albums were Bee Gees records; Dahl used to inhale helium on the air to do a mocking imitation of the band.

The event ended, deplorably, in a riotous melee that police had to break up. House music pioneer Vince Lawrence, who was working that night as a teenage usher, remembers seeing a disproportionate number of Black artists in the album pile. For many, Dahl’s “Disco Sucks!” movement took on the pall of a fascist uprising. “It was a book burning. It was a racist, homophobic book burning,” Lawrence says. “And the Bee Gees got caught up in that, because they were part of that culture that was lifting a lot of people up.”

The brothers were hurt and confused by the sudden backlash; record companies started dropping disco acts and everyone’s gaze was about to turn toward MTV. Asked about it then, Barry grew testy with an interviewer and looked angrily into the camera: “Does anybody mind if [the Bee Gees] exist in the ’80s, thank you?”

Yet “The Bee Gees” hardly ends on a note of bitterness. The brothers reinvented themselves once more, this time as master collaborators and surefire love-song wizards writing for others, including Barbra Streisand (“Guilty,” “A Woman in Love”), Dionne Warwick (“Heartbreaker”); Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers (“Islands in the Stream”); and more. Respect came in due time (including a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1997) as did a recurring theme of loss.

“I can’t honestly come to terms with the fact that [Robin, Maurice and their younger brother Andy] are not here anymore. I’ve never been able to do that,” Barry says. “I’d rather have them here and no hits at all.”

View the full article here on The Washington Post

A month after Deadline revealed that HBO Documentary Films acquired North American rights to The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart, the film has been set to premiere December 12 at 8 p.m. ET on HBO. It will also be viewable to stream on HBO Max. You can watch the first trailer above.

The Frank Marshall-directed pic had been an official selection of the 2020 Telluride Film Festival before that fest was derailed by the pandemic. It tells the story of an iconic band that is way more than a symbol of the polyester disco era from when their soundtrack-fueled Saturday Night Fever. That was just one part of their evolution as musicians. Marshall has directed an intimate look at siblings Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb. They wrote more than 1,000 songs, including 20 No. 1 hits throughout their career.

Pic is a Polygram Entertainment presentation of a Kennedy/Marshall and White Horse Pictures production in association with Diamond Docs. Marshall produced alongside Nigel Sinclair and Jeanne Elfant Festa, and Mark Monroe, latter of whom wrote the script.

The Bee Gees story with all their tunes has been catnip and aside from a stage musical project with Barry Gibb, Elisabeth Murdoch and Stacey Snider at Sister are teamed with Steven Spielberg and Bohemian Rhapsody producer Graham King and scribe Anthony McCarten in developing with Paramount a big Bee Gees narrative film.

Read the full story and watch the trailer on Deadline

Interview with filmmakers Jeanne Elfant Festa & Mark Monroe

Amid our splintered pop-cultural moment, it’s hard to fathom how big the Bee Gees were. The band, formed all the way back in 1958 by brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb, owned the 1970s in a way that seems inconceivable today. Not only did the Gibbs sell 120 million records and release nine chart-topping singles, but they also became the poster boys for the disco genre.

A new documentary, The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, aims to convey the trio’s massive impact — including its musical influence, which persists in the present day. The film will have its premiere tomorrow, October 8, at the Dezerland Park Drive-In, where, from the comfort of your car, you can experience the rise of and backlash toward one of the most popular musical acts of the 20th Century.

The drive-in screening — which kicks off the Miami Film Festival’s fall presentation, Gems — is coincidentally located one block from Criteria Studios, where the Bee Gees laid down many of their hits, from “Jive Talkin'” to “Nights on Broadway.”

As one might expect, the city the Bee Gees called home beginning in 1975 plays a strong supporting role in How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.

“Eric Clapton suggested they come to Miami, where the sunshine helped their creative evolution,” says Jeanne Elfant Festa, the film’s coproducer. “We were able to include all this beautiful footage of Miami from the keyboardist’s Super 8 camera.”

“They were young guys. They came to Miami not just to make music, but to have fun,” adds writer and coproducer Mark Monroe. “The dance music in Miami, the different communities — all of that are part of the ingredients of the music that came.”

The Bee Gees famously showed off their new adopted home in the promo video for “Night Fever,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978. In the video, cars are driving down Collins Avenue with the brothers superimposed over a neon-lit Sunny Isles Beach doing its best Vegas imitation. The long-gone beachside motels and delicatessens never looked more glamorous than when soundtracked to the disco classic.

But the filmmakers say their documentary goes far deeper than the familiar setting.

“We show how they pioneered the drum loop and the synthesizer,” Elfant Festa says by way of example. “There’s a scene where you can hear the evolution of the recording of the song ‘Nights on Broadway.'”

She says it wasn’t hard to persuade some of today’s biggest musical acts to speak about the Gibbs’ influence.

“We interviewed Nick Jonas, Mark Ronson, and Chris Martin from Coldplay. They all jumped to talk about how the Bee Gees influenced them,” Elfant Festa tells New Times. “After we already locked the picture, we showed it to Taylor Hawkins, the drummer of the Foo Fighters. He was asking us if it wasn’t too late to interview him. He loved the Bee Gees.”

The film also takes a serious look at the backlash to the band and the disco genre, culminating in 1979 when Chicago shock jock Steve Dahl staged the infamous Disco Demolition Night at the home of the White Sox, Comiskey Park. Though the Bee Gees are straight cis white men, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart posits that much of the resentment had its roots in bigotry.

“They became targets because of their success,” Monroe argues. “The Bee Gees were influenced by the R&B and dance music of minority groups — the discotheques were where Blacks, Latinos, and gays went to dance. There were a lot of people who wanted no part in that. Disco was a target, but I think it had as much to do with opening up of cultures in mainstream music.”

Still, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart is more musical celebration than societal analysis. It’s one that Elfant Festa claims might not be safe for these times of social distancing.

“It’s going to be hard for people to stay in their cars,” she says, “because they’re going to want to dance.” 

View the story on The Miami New Times

Films about The Bee Gees, David Olney and more stood out at the fest

Given Nashville’s global reputation as a music capital, it’s understandable — if also a little predictable — that the Nashville Film Festival always features music movies on its rosters. Music documentaries like Woodstock and Dig! demonstrate that the lives of music-makers can be as captivating — and as captivatingly captured — as the best narrative cinema. That said, music films, like musical artists, may only appeal to fans of a particular act. Worse yet, they can also reveal that your favorite singer, songwriter or virtuoso musician is somebody you can’t possibly spend even two hours with. I’m usually less than excited by the festival’s music movie offerings, but this year they were the clear standout during a week full of films.

The festival and its tuneful film category got a roaring start with Frank Marshall’s The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart slated as the online event’s opening-night presentation. One can imagine a packed red carpet for this film in a world sans-pandemic. Barry Gibb himself might have made the trip given the only surviving Gibb brother’s connections to Nashville’s music scene. While we missed out on the real-life razzle dazzle this movie might have generated, there was nearly nothing missing in Marshall’s exhaustive — but never exhausting — exhumation of the Australian band’s decades-long career, and the massive impact The Bee Gees have had on popular music.

Marshall’s approach isn’t groundbreaking, but his storytelling chops are top-notch. The film predictably takes us from the band’s teenage success in Australia to their breakthrough in England where their folk-rock sound finds them hitting the charts and palling around with John, Paul, George and Ringo. The movie traces the group’s developing into a rhythm-and-blues band, and achieving global superstardom with the Saturday Night Fever film and its forever-danceable soundtrack. It also follows up on the backlash against disco and the brothers’ evolution into a songwriting and production team, working with other artists and scoring hits through the 1980s. Along the way, Marshall also reveals the inner workings of the band as they grow as artists and as brothers.

Of course, all of this is expected from a Bee Gees doc, but Marshall’s unexpected touches are what makes this movie special: The behind-the-scenes details of how Saturday Night Fever came together are fascinating, and so is the band’s post-disco evolution — a period of continued creative and financial success that even fans might not be fully aware of. Another great detail is the commentary from Oasis songsmith and guitar slinger, Noel Gallagher. The Gallagher brothers’ success and brotherly combativeness are both the stuff of legend, and Noel Gallagher’s hilarious insights here are one masterstroke in a movie with many.

Read the full story from Nashville Scene

Watch the report on Good Morning America Pop News

NAACP Image Awards: ‘Harriet’ Leads Film Nominations With 10

Other top nominees include ‘Us,’ ‘Dolemite Is My Name,’ ‘Queen & Slim,’ ‘Just Mercy’ and ‘The Lion King.’

Kasi Lemmons’ Harriet on Thursday scored the most NAACP Image Awards nominations of any film with 10, including one for star Cynthia Erivo’s original song featured in the film, “Stand Up.” The movie is also up for best soundtrack, outstanding motion picture, best actress (Erivo), supporting actor (Leslie Odom Jr.), supporting actress (Janelle Monáe), breakthrough performance (Erivo), ensemble cast, writing (Lemmons and Gregory Allen Howard) and directing (Lemmons).

Other films nominated for multiple NAACP Image Awards include Jordan Peele’s Us, with eight nods; Eddie Murphy-starrer Dolemite Is My Name and Melina Matsoukas’ Queen & Slim, which are up for seven awards each; and Just Mercy and The Lion King, which are up for six awards apiece, with Beyoncé’s soundtrack contribution “Spirit” also nominated. 

Harriet, Us, Dolemite, Just Mercy and Queen & Slim are all up for outstanding motion picture and ensemble cast, while Dolemite and Queen & Slim are both nominated in the outstanding independent motion picture category, where they will face off against three-time nominee Clemency and two-time nominees Luce and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

Best actor nominees include 21 Bridges‘ Chadwick Boseman, Queen & Slim‘s Daniel Kaluuya, Dolemite‘s Murphy, Just Mercy‘s Michael B. Jordan and Winston Duke of Us.

Joining Erivo in the best actress category are Clemency‘s Alfre Woodard, Queen & Slim‘s Jodie Turner-Smith, Lupita Nyong’o of Us and Black and Blue‘s Naomie Harris. Meanwhile, Turner-Smith joins Erivo in the breakthrough performance category alongside Little‘s Marsai Martin, Just Mercy‘s Rob Morgan and Shahidi Wright Joseph of Us. 

Dolemite is represented twice in the best supporting actor category, with both Tituss Burgess and Wesley Snipes earning nods, alongside Harriet‘s Odom Jr., Just Mercy‘s Jamie Foxx and Waves‘ Sterling K. Brown. Supporting actress nominees are Dolemite‘s Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Harriet‘s Monáe, Hustlers‘ Jennifer Lopez, Little‘s Marsai Martin and Luce‘s Octavia Spencer.

The Lion King dominates the outstanding character voiceover performance category with nominations for Woodard, Donald Glover and James Earl Jones. Other nominees are Nyong’o for Discovery Channel’s Serengeti and Sterling K. Brown for Frozen 2.

Us‘ Jordan Peele is also nominated in the outstanding writing and directing in a motion picture category, facing off in the former with the writers of Harriet, Just Mercy, Clemencyand Brian Banks.

On the TV side, Netflix’s When They See Us leads with nine noms, followed by ABC’s Black-ish with eight, NBC’s This Is Us and OWN’s Queen Sugar with five each and EPIX’s Godfather of Harlem with four.

In terms of individual performers, Beyoncé has six nominations across various categories, followed by H.E.R. and Lizzo with four each. Lizzo is also up for entertainer of the year, where she will face off against Tyler Perry and two-time nominees Angela Bassett, Billy Porter and Regina King.

In terms of studios behind the nominated projects, Netflix leads with 42 mentions (30 in TV and 12 in film), followed by Universal with 15.

The 51st NAACP Image Awards — recognizing the achievements of people of color in TV, music, literature and film and those who promote social justice through creative endeavors — will air live on BET on Saturday, Feb. 22, at 8 p.m. ET.

A complete list of this year’s nominees follows.

Entertainer of the Year

Angela Basset
Billy Porter
Lizzo
Regina King
Tyler Perry

Outstanding Drama Series

Godfather of Harlem (EPIX)
Greenleaf (OWN)
Queen Sugar (OWN)
The Chi (Showtime)
Watchmen (HBO)

Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series

Billy Porter – Pose (FX Networks)
Forest Whitaker – Godfather of Harlem (EPIX)
Kofi Siriboe – Queen Sugar (OWN)
Omari Hardwick – Power (Starz)
Sterling K. Brown – This Is Us (NBC)

Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series

Angela Bassett – 9-1-1 (FOX)
Regina King – Watchmen (HBO)
Rutina Wesley – Queen Sugar (OWN)
Simone Missick – All Rise (CBS)
Viola Davis – How to Get Away with Murder (ABC)

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

CCH Pounder – NCIS: New Orleans (CBS)
Lynn Whitfield – Greenleaf (OWN)
Lyric Ross – This Is Us (NBC)
Susan Kelechi Watson – This Is Us (NBC)
Tina Lifford – Queen Sugar (OWN)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series

Delroy Lindo – The Good Fight (CBS All Access)
Giancarlo Esposito – Godfather of Harlem (EPIX)
Harold Perrineau – Claws (TNT)
Nigél Thatch – Godfather of Harlem (EPIX)
Wendell Pierce – Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (Prime Video)

Outstanding Comedy Series

Ballers (HBO)
black-ish (ABC)
Dear White People (Netflix)
grown-ish (Freeform)
The Neighborhood (CBS)

Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series

Logan Browning – Dear White People (Netflix)
Jill Scott – First Wives Club (BET+)
Tiffany Haddish – The Last O.G. (TBS)
Tracee Ellis Ross – black-ish (ABC)
Yara Shahidi – grown-ish (Freeform)

Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series

Anthony Anderson – black-ish (ABC)
Cedric The Entertainer – The Neighborhood (CBS)
Don Cheadle – Black Monday (Showtime)
Dwayne Johnson – Ballers (HBO)
Tracy Morgan – The Last O.G. (TBS)

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series

Halle Bailey – grown-ish (Freeform)
Loretta Devine – Family Reunion (Netflix)
Marsai Martin – black-ish (ABC)
Regina Hall – Black Monday (Showtime)
Tichina Arnold – The Neighborhood (CBS)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series

Andre Braugher – Brooklyn Nine-Nine (NBC)
Deon Cole – black-ish (ABC)
Laurence Fishburne – black-ish (ABC)
Terry Crews – Brooklyn Nine-Nine (NBC)
Tituss Burgess – Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix)

Outstanding Television Movie, Limited-Series or Dramatic Special

American Son (Netflix)
Being Mary Jane (BET Networks)
Native Son (HBO)
True Detective (HBO)
When They See Us (Netflix)

Outstanding Actress in a Television Movie, Limited-Series or Dramatic Special

Aunjanue Ellis – When They See Us (Netflix)
Gabrielle Union – Being Mary Jane (BET Networks)
Kerry Washington – American Son (Netflix)
Niecy Nash – When They See Us (Netflix)
Octavia Spencer – Truth Be Told (Apple TV+)

Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie, Limited-Series or Dramatic Special

Caleel Harris – When They See Us (Netflix)
Ethan Henru Herisse – When They See Us (Netflix)
Idris Elba – Luther (BBC America)
Jharrel Jerome – When They See Us (Netflix)
Mahershala Ali – True Detective (HBO)

Outstanding News/Information – (Series or Special)

PUSHOUT: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools (PBS)
Surviving R. Kelly (Lifetime)
The Breakfast Club (REVOLT)
The Story of God with Morgan Freeman (National Geographic)
Unsung (TV One)

Outstanding Talk Series

Red Table Talk (Facebook Watch)
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (Comedy Central)
The Real (Syndicated)
The Shop: Uninterrupted (HBO)
The Tamron Hall Show (Syndicated)

Outstanding Reality Program, Reality Competition or Game Show (Series)

Iyanla: Fix My Life (OWN)
Lip Sync Battle (Paramount Network)
Rhythm + Flow (Netflix)
Sunday Best (BET Networks)
The Voice (NBC)

Outstanding Variety Show (Series or Special)

2019 Black Girls Rock! (BET Networks)
Dave Chappelle: Sticks & Stones (Netflix)
Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé (Netflix)
Saturday Night Live (NBC)
Wanda Sykes: Not Normal (Netflix)

Outstanding Children’s Program

Doc McStuffins (Disney Junior)
Family Reunion (Netflix)
Kevin Hart’s Guide to Black History (Netflix)
Marvel’s Avengers: Black Panther’s Quest (Disney XD)
Motown Magic (Netflix)

Outstanding Performance by a Youth (Series, Special, Television Movie or Limited Series)

Caleel Harris – When They See Us (Netflix)
Lonnie Chavis – This Is Us (NBC)
Lyric Ross – This Is Us (NBC)
Marsai Martin – black-ish (ABC)
Miles Brown – black-ish (ABC)

Outstanding Host in a Talk or News/Information (Series or Special) – Individual or Ensemble

Angela Rye – Young Gifted and Broke: A BET Town Hall (BET Networks)
Jada Pinkett Smith – Red Table Talk (Facebook Watch)
Lester Holt – NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (NBC)
Trevor Noah – The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (Comedy Central)
Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, Meghan McCain, Abby Huntsman, Ana Navarro – The View (ABC)

Outstanding Host in a Reality/Reality Competition, Game Show or Variety (Series or Special) – Individual or Ensemble

Iyanla Vanzant – Iyanla: Fix My Life (OWN)
LL Cool J – Lip Sync Battle (Paramount Network)
Regina Hall – 2019 BET Awards (BET Networks)
Steve Harvey – Celebrity Family Feud (ABC)
Wayne Brady – Let’s Make A Deal (CBS)

Outstanding Guest Performance in a Comedy or Drama Series

Blair Underwood – Dear White People ( Netflix)
David Alan Grier – Queen Sugar (OWN)
Kelly Rowland – American Soul (BET Networks)
MAJOR. – STAR (FOX)
Sanaa Lathan – The Affair (Showtime)

Outstanding Album

Cuz I Love You – Lizzo (Nice Life Records/Atlantic Records)
Homecoming: The Live Album – Beyoncé (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records)
I Used To Know H.E.R. – H.E.R. (RCA Records)
Sketchbook – Fantasia (Rock Soul Inc./BMG)
Worthy – India.Arie (India.Arie Inc./BMG)

Outstanding New Artist

Ari Lennox (Dreamville/Interscope Records)
Lil Nas X (Columbia Records)
Lucky Daye (Keep Cool/RCA Records)
Mahalia (Burkmar/Warner Music UK)
Mykal Kilgore (Affective Music)

Outstanding Male Artist

Bruno Mars (Atlantic Records)
Khalid (RCA Records)
Lil Nas X (Columbia Records)
MAJOR. (BOE Music Group/EMPIRE)
PJ Morton (Morton Records)

Outstanding Female Artist

Beyoncé (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records)
Fantasia (Rock Soul Inc./BMG)
H.E.R. (RCA Records)
India.Arie (India.Arie Inc./BMG)
Lizzo (Nice Life Records/Atlantic Records)

Outstanding Song – Traditional

“Enough” – Fantasia (Rock Soul Inc./BMG)
“Jerome” – Lizzo (Nice Life Records/Atlantic Records)
“SPIRIT” – Beyoncé (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records)
“Stand Up” – Cynthia Erivo (Back Lot Music)
“Steady Love” – India.Arie (India.Arie Inc./BMG)

Outstanding Song – Contemporary

“Before I Let Go” – Beyoncé (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records)
“Hard Place” – H.E.R. (RCA Records)
“Juice” – Lizzo (Nice Life Records/Atlantic Records)
“Talk” – Khalid (RCA Records)
“Motivation” – Normani (Keep Cool/RCA Records)

Outstanding Duo, Group or Collaboration

“Brown Skin Girl” – Blue Ivy, SAINt JHN, Beyoncé & WizKiD (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records)
“No Guidance” – Chris Brown feat. Drake (Chris Brown Entertainment/RCA Records)
“Say So” – PJ Morton feat. JoJo (Morton Records/EMPIRE)
“Shea Butter Baby” – Ari Lennox feat. J. Cole (Dreamville/Interscope Records)
“Show Me Love” – Alicia Keys feat. Miguel (RCA Records)

Outstanding Gospel/Christian Album (Traditional or Contemporary)

I Made It Out – John P. Kee feat. Zacardi Cortez (Kee Music Group/Entertainment One)
Laughter – Bebe Winans feat. Korean Soul (Regimen Records)
Love Theory – Kirk Franklin (Fo Yo Soul Records/RCA Records)
Not Yet – Donnie McClurkin (Camdon Music/RCA Inspiration)
Victory – The Clark Sisters (Karew Records/Motown Gospel/Capitol CMG)

Outstanding Jazz Album

Carib – David Sanchez (Ropeadope)
Center of The Heart – Najee (Shanachie)
Love & Liberation – Jazzmeia Horn (Concord Jazz)
SoulMate – Nathan Mitchell (Enm Music Group)
The Dream Is You: Vanessa Rubin Sings Tadd Dameron – Vanessa Rubin (Vanessa Rubin)

Outstanding Music Video/Visual Album

“Hard Place” – H.E.R. (RCA Records)
“Juice” – Lizzo (Nice Life Records/Atlantic Records)
“No Guidance” – Chris Brown feat. Drake (Chris Brown Entertainment/RCA Records)
“Steady Love” – India.Arie (India.Arie Inc./BMG)
“Talk” – Khalid (RCA Records)

Outstanding Soundtrack/Compilation

Harriet (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) – Terence Blanchard (Back Lot Music)
Queen & Slim The Soundtrack – Various Artists (Motown Records)
The Lion King: The Gift – Beyoncé w/Various Artists (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records)
The Lion King Original Motion Picture Soundtrack – Various Artists (Walt Disney Records)
Us (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) – Michael Abels (Back Lot Music)

Outstanding Literary Work – Fiction

New Daughters of Africa – Margaret Busby (HarperCollins Publishers)
Out of Darkness, Shining Light – Petina Gappah (Simon and Schuster)
Red at the Bone – Jacqueline Woodson (Riverhead Books PRH)
The Revisioners – Margaret Wilkerson Sexton (Counter Point Press)
The Water Dancer – Ta-Nehisi Coates (One World)

Outstanding Literary Work – Non-Fiction

Breathe: A Letter to My Sons – Dr. Imani Perry (Beacon Press)
STONY THE ROAD: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow – Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Penguin Press)
The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations – Toni Morrison (Alfred A. Knopf)
The Yellow House – Sarah M. Broom (Grove Atlantic)
What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays – Damon Young (HarperCollins Publishers)

Outstanding Literary Work – Instructional

Inspire Your Home: Easy, Affordable Ideas to Make Every Room Glamorous – Farah Merhi (Tiller Press)
Letters to the Finishers (who struggle to finish) – Candace E. Wilkins (New Season Books)
More Than Pretty: Doing the Soul Work that Uncovers Your True Beauty – Erica Campbell (Howard Books)
Vegetables Unleashed – José Andres (HarperCollins Publishers)
Your Next Level Life: 7 Rules of Power, Confidence, And Opportunity For Black Women In America – Karen Arrington (Author), Joanna Price (Illustrator), Sheryl Taylor (Forward) (Mango Publishing)

Outstanding Literary Work – Debut Author

American Spy – Lauren Wilkinson (Random House)
I Am Dance: Words and Images of the Black Dancer – Hal Banfield (Author), Javier Vasquez (Illustrator), (Literary Revolutionary)
More Than Pretty: Doing The Soul Work To Uncover Your True Beauty – Erica Campbell (Howard Books)
Such A Fun Age – Kiley Reid (Penguin Publishing Group)
The Farm – Joanne Ramos (Random House)

Outstanding Literary Work – Biography/Autobiography

Free Cyntoia: My Search for Redemption in the American Prison System – Cyntoia Brown-Long (Atria Books)
Finding My Voice: My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward – Valerie Jarrett (Viking Press)
More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say) – Elaine Welteroth (Viking Press)
My Name Is Prince – Randee St. Nicholas (HarperCollins Publishers)
The Beautiful Ones – Prince (Author), Dan Piepenbring (Edited by), (Random House)

Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry

A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland – DaMaris B. Hill (Bloomsbury Publishing)
Felon: Poems – Reginald Dwayne Betts (W.W. Norton Company)
Honeyfish – Lauren K. Alleyne (New Issues Poetry and Prose)
Mistress – Chet’la Sebree (New Issue Poetry and Prose)
The Tradition – Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon Press)

Outstanding Literary Work – Children

A Place to Land: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Speech That Inspired a Nation – Barry Wittenstein (Author), Jerry Pinkney (Illustrator), (Neal Porter Books / Holiday House Publishing Inc)
Hair Love – Matthew A. Cherry (Author), Vashti Harrison (Illustrator), (Kokila)
Parker Looks Up: An Extraordinary Moment – Parker Curry (Author), Jessica Curry (Author), Brittany Jackson (Illustrator), (Aladdin Books)
Ruby Finds a Worry – Tom Percival (Bloomsbury Publishing)
Sulwe – Lupita Nyong’o (Author), Vashti Harrison (Illustrator), (Simon & Schuster, BFYR)

Outstanding Literary Work – Youth/Teens

Around Harvard Square – C.J. Farley (Akashic Books)
Her Own Two Feet: A Rwandan Girl’s Brave Fight to Walk – Meredith Davis (Author), Rebeka Uwitonze (Author), (Scholastic Inc.)
Hot Comb – Ebony Flowers (Author), Ebony Flowers (Illustrator), (Drawn and Quarterly)
I’m Not Dying with You Tonight – Gilly Segal (Author), Kimberly Jones (Author), (Sourcebooks Fire)
The Forgotten Girl – India Hill Brown (Scholastic Inc.)

Outstanding Motion Picture

Dolemite is My Name (Netflix)
Harriet (Focus Features)
Just Mercy (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Queen & Slim (Universal Pictures)
Us (Universal Pictures)

Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture

Chadwick Boseman – 21 Bridges (STX Films)
Daniel Kaluuya – Queen & Slim (Universal Pictures)
Eddie Murphy – Dolemite is My Name (Netflix)
Michael B. Jordan – Just Mercy (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Winston Duke – Us (Universal Pictures)

Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture

Alfre Woodard – Clemency (Neon)
Cynthia Erivo – Harriet (Focus Features)
Jodie Turner-Smith – Queen & Slim (Universal Pictures)
Lupita Nyong’o – Us (Universal Pictures)
Naomie Harris – Black and Blue (Screen Gems/Sony Pictures)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture

Jamie Foxx – Just Mercy (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Leslie Odom, Jr. – Harriet (Focus Features)
Sterling K. Brown – Waves (A24)
Tituss Burgess – Dolemite Is My Name (Netflix)
Wesley Snipes – Dolemite Is My Name (Netflix)

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture

Da’Vine Joy Randolph – Dolemite is My Name (Netflix)
Janelle Monáe – Harriet (Focus Features)
Jennifer Lopez – Hustlers (STX Films)
Marsai Martin – Little (Universal Pictures)
Octavia Spencer – Luce (Neon)

Outstanding Breakthrough Performance in a Motion Picture

Cynthia Erivo – Harriet (Focus Features)
Jodie Turner-Smith – Queen & Slim (Universal Pictures)
Marsai Martin – Little (Universal Pictures)
Rob Morgan – Just Mercy (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Shahadi Wright Joseph – Us (Universal Pictures)

Outstanding Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture

Dolemite is My Name (Netflix)
Harriet (Focus Features)
Just Mercy (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Queen & Slim (Universal Pictures)
Us (Universal Pictures)

Outstanding Independent Motion Picture

Clemency (Neon)
Dolemite is My Name (Netflix)
Luce (Neon)
Queen & Slim (Universal Pictures)
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (Netflix)

Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance

Alfre Woodard – The Lion King (Walt Disney Studios)
Donald Glover – The Lion King (Walt Disney Studios)
James Earl Jones – The Lion King (Walt Disney Studios)
Lupita Nyong’o – Serengeti (Discovery Channel)
Sterling K. Brown – Frozen II (Walt Disney Studios)

Outstanding Documentary (Film)

Miles Davis: Birth Of The Cool (Eagle Rock Entertainment)
The Black Godfather (Netflix)
The Apollo (HBO)
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (Magnolia Pictures)
True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality (HBO)

Outstanding Documentary (Television – Series or Special)

Free Meek (Prime Video)
Hitsville: The Making of Motown (Showtime)
Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé (Netflix)
Martin: The Legacy of A King (BET Networks)
ReMastered: The Two Killings of Sam Cooke (Netflix)

Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series

Cord Jefferson – The Good Place – “Tinker, Tailor, Demon, Spy” (NBC)
Gloria Calderon Kellett, Mike Royce – One Day at a Time – “Ghosts” (Netflix)
Jason Kim – Barry – “Past=Present x Future Over Yesterday” (HBO)
Karen Gist, Peter Saji – Mixed-ish – “Let Your Hair Down” (ABC)
Trevor Noah – The Daily Show with Trevor Noah – “Steve King’s Comments Meet Trevor Noah: Racism Detective” (Comedy Central)

Outstanding Writing in a Dramatic Series

Kay Oyegun – This Is Us – “This Big, Amazing, Beautiful Life” (NBC) (WINNER)
Janine Sherman Barrois – Claws – “Cracker Casserole” (TNT)
Lena Waithe – The Chi – “Pilot” (Showtime)
Patrick Joseph Charles – Black Lightning – “Sins of the Father: The Book of Redemption” (The CW/Netflix)
Lena Waithe, Dime Davis – The Chi – “The Whistle” (Showtime)

Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture (Television)

Cas Sigers-Beedles – Twas the Chaos Before Christmas (BET)
Melissa Bustamante – A Christmas Winter Song (Lifetime)
Patrik-Ian Polk – Being Mary Jane (BET Networks)
Suzan-Lori Parks – Native Son (HBO)
Yvette Nicole Brown – Always a Bridesmaid (BET Networks)

Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture (Film)

Chinonye Chukwu – Clemency (Neon)
Destin Daniel Cretton, Andrew Lanham – Just Mercy (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Doug Atchison – Brian Banks (Bleeker Street and ShivHans)
Jordan Peele – Us (Universal Pictures)
Kasi Lemmons, Gregory Allen Howard – Harriet (Focus Features)

Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series

Anya Adams – GLOW – “Outward Bound” (Netflix)
Justin Tipping – Black Monday – “7042” (Showtime)
Ken Whittingham – Atypical – “Road Rage Paige” (Netflix)
Randall Winston – Grace and Frankie – “The Pharmacy” (Netflix)
Shaka King – Shrill – “Pool” (Hulu)

Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series

Ava DuVernay – When They See Us – “Part Four” (Netflix)
Carl H. Seaton, Jr. – Snowfall – “Hedgehogs” (FX Networks)
Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson – Power – “Forgot About Dre” (STARZ)
Debbie Allen – Grey’s Anatomy – “Silent All These Years” (ABC)
Jet Wilkinson – The Chi – “The Scorpion and the Frog” (Showtime)

Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture (Television)

Codie Elaine Oliver – Black Love (OWN)
Janice Cooke – I Am Sombody’s Child: The Regina Louise Story (Lifetime)
Kenny Leon – American Son (Netflix)
Rashid Johnson – Native Son (HBO)
Russ Parr – The Bobby Debarge Story (TV One)

Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture (Film)

Chiwetel Ejiofor – The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (Netflix)
Jordan Peele – Us (Universal Pictures)
Kasi Lemmons – Harriet (Focus Features)
Mati Diop – Atlantics (Les Films du Bal Presente en Co-Production avec Cinekap et Frakas Productions en Co-Production avec Arte France Cinema et Canal+ International for Netflix)
Reginald Hudlin – The Black Godfather (Netflix)

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