Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist, an eight episode series and the latest offering from HBCU alum Will Packer debuts on Peacock on Thursday, August 5. The limited drama series is based on the iHeart true-crime podcast also produced by Packer. The story follows an armed robbery that occurs on the same night of Muhammad Ali’s 1970 comeback fight against Jerry Quarry in Atlanta. A street hustler named Chicken Man, portrayed by Kevin Hart, threw a party, the one that was eventually robbed, for an elite clientele in town for the fight, including some of the top Black mafia leaders at the time. The story takes you on a wild journey of the aftermath of the robbery and how the events ultimately transformed Atlanta from a southern town into the “Black Mecca.”
The Peacock series is laden with HBCU alums both in front of and behind the camera. Samuel L. Jackson, Morehouse, and Taraji P. Henson, Howard, deliver their standard level of excellence in their roles. Jackson in my opinion really delivered a memorable performance in his role of Frank Moten, a black mafia leader. The strength and power of his character was poignantly characterized as much through mannerisms as it was dialogue. David Banner, Southern University, expanded his artistic expression in the role of Missouri Slim, a character that eventually finds himself at odds with other mafia members. Banner talked about the feeling of disappearing into the character.
“We look just like our parents. So once they put the right makeup on, the right hair on. And we put those clothes on. It felt like we literally were our parents. I’ve never been touched that way. It almost shook me out of my character. It was so dope. I was like, we are so beautiful.”
“And that is something that I have to give. And I have to thank Will for this. Is that something that Eddie Murphy did in his time is to make sure that the revolutionary aspect of this film is the fact that we made black people look great, right,” Banner said during a recent HBCU screening of the series in Atlanta.
Several HBCU students along with members of HBCU related press entities were invited for a screening of the first episode.
There was significant representation of HBCU alums behind the camera as well. Dianne Ashford is a producer on the series. Both she and Packer are Florida A&M alums, although they didn’t know one another until later in life. Ashford connected with Packer 25 years ago, when she was looking to get away from her corporate job.
“I graduated with a degree in computer information systems, and I went to work at AT&T. I worked there for six years, and then I said, I want to change careers. I took a 30 day leave of absence from my corporate job to intern for this man on a project. I didn’t get paid, I wasn’t getting paid for my corporate job, and I wasn’t getting paid from him. And this was my first opportunity. I finished that project. I went back, I quit my corporate job and I moved back home (Atlanta). I moved back home and been going ever since for the last 23 years,” Ashford said.
Ashford has been a producer on 33 projects to date according to her IMBD profile, most recently including Tyler Perry’s latest film Divorce in the Black.
While Packer loves showcasing black excellence from HBCUs on both sides of the camera, he insists that the excellence must come first.
“You talk about folks here that have these HBCU connections. We wanted the best. Make no mistake, we wanted the best. Period. And what happens and what other people miss sometimes is that when you talk about diversity, you talk about making sure that you’re being inclusionary. They forget that there is an opportunity to have the best people who happen to also be diverse.
Not saying oh you went to FAMU, you went to Clark Atlanta, Howard, let me hook you up over somebody who’s better than you. No no no. This is high quality, this is the biggest project on this platform all year. Right? So it has to be top notch. The people that we’re answering to, the financiers, the studios, all they want is the best. We deliver the best. And it happened to look like the room,” Packer said.
The leading actors in Fight Night are: Kevin Hart, Samuel L. Jackson, Don Cheadle, Terrence Howard, Taraji P. Henson, and Dexter Darden. This star-studded series was created and written by Shaye Ogbonna, a Howard University alum.
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