After sharing the screen with Sean Penn in Pierre Morel’s The Gunman, Idris Elba closed out 2015 with Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts Of No Nation. The movie centres on Agu (Abraham Attah) – a child soldier in West Africa – and Idris Elba plays his Commandant. The film was celebrated as an outstanding achievement upon its release but, while the subject matter and performances are indeed important, it’s the controversy caused by the nature of its release that relates more closely to the rise of Idris Elba.
The distribution rights to Beasts Of No Nation were secured by Netflix and, as a result, a simultaneous digital and theatrical release was planned. Larger theatre chains, including AMC and Cinemark, boycotted the film in protest against the perceived violation of the traditional 90-day release window that is usually afforded to cinemas. Bringing into focus the debate around the impact of developments in home cinema on movie theatre attendance, Beasts Of No Nation was transformed into something of a test case – and the size of its theatrical release undoubtedly suffered as a result.
But, in terms of the trajectory of the career of Idris Elba, the situation that unfolded around the release of Beasts Of No Nation fit perfectly with his position at the forefront of the blurring of that previously hard line. It’s no coincidence that the film is the work of Cary Fukunaga – whose television series True Detective was also part of this ongoing phase of media evolution. Together, with Beasts Of No Nation, Elba and Fukunaga not only challenged the status quo that dictates access to film releases, but they did so with a story that forces the audience to confront a terrible and shameful truth about the phenomenon of child soldiers.
2016 saw Idris Elba star in six theatrically released movies. Three of those – Zootroplis, The Jungle Book and Finding Dory – were voice-over roles in films that would be among the highest grossing of the year. James Watkins’ Bastille Day, and Jim O’Hanlon’s 100 Streets had less successful box office runs, but Elba balanced those with his role as the villainous Krall in the franchise film, Star Trek Beyond.