Nate Parker’s Blacklisted ‘American Skin’ Gets January 2021 Release Date

It’s been three years since Nate Parker was “cancelled” by the industry at large for a past 1999 rape allegation. However, the director made a comeback, of sorts, last year at the Venice Film Festival with “American Skin.” Spike Lee was in attendance at the screening, supporting Parker and telling the audience that we need to “move forward.” A Venice career comeback seemed to be in-the-works for Parker, but, turns out, critics had their fangs fready for Parker, and a lot of work needed to be done before the actor-directorcould properly rehabilitate his career.

What ”American Skin” needed most to survive were positive notices from the American press. And yet, the reviews out of Venice for “American Skin” were not good. The comeback Parker wanted to mount had to wait, as the film’s U.S. theatrical release was in question. Would we have to wait years, if ever, before we could actually catch “American Skin”? We got our answer today as Vertical Entertainment has announced a 01.15.20 VOD release date has been scheduled for the film. Not just that, we also got a trailer.

If you remember, in 2016, Parker’s “The Birth of a Nation” was the toast of the town at the Sundance Film Festival when it was purchased by Fox Searchlight for a record $17.5 million. However, slowly creeping back in the spotlight were past rape accusations thrown against Parker, more than two decades earlier. It was revealed that Parker has been accused—and eventually acquitted—of rape charges while still a college student. Parker would eventually try to defend himself, telling Deadline that he would “not relive that period of his life” as a consequence of his success, and openly avoided questions asked by journalists at an infamous TIFF press conference that I had covered for The Playlist. “The Birth of a Nation” was ultimately doomed, its glowing reviews replaced with mixed ones and Oscar chances all but completely annexed.

Parker did apologize about how he went about it back in 2016: “Three years ago I was pretty tone-deaf to the realities of certain situations that were happening in the climate,” he said. “And I’ve had a lot of time to think about that, and I’ve learned a lot from it. And being tone-deaf, there were a lot of people that were hurt in my response, in the way I approached things. I apologize to those people.” Parker would continue to chart his own personal growth behind the scenes. “I’ve learned, I’m continuing to learn. I’m 39 years old now. Hopefully, I have a long way to go. The hope is that I can continue taking the wisdom from people who care enough…and help me to be introspective about where I am and what I’ve been through.”