Judas and the Black Messiah

Director Shaka King has described the initial idea for the film as "The Departed (2006) inside the world of COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program)." He thought it was a clever way to "sort of Trojan-horse a Fred Hampton biopic and introduce the world, you know, a great segment of the world who is unaware of who he was, and is highly unaware of the Panthers' politics and ideology."

The movie's ending sequence includes an information card implying that William O'Neal committed suicide after his PBS interview aired, on 15 January 1990. That isn't accurate. The PBS series 'Eyes on the Prize' did debut on that date, but the O'Neal interview did not air until 9 February, three and a half weeks after O'Neal's suicide. No one knows why O'Neal chose kill himself on 15 January, and his family disputed that his traffic fatality was a suicide. They claimed it was an accident.

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