Justin Simien

• 1. Introduction

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  Justin Simien walked onto the stage at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival premiere of his debut film, Dear White People. He used the moment to publicly say he is gay. The film had just won him the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Talent. It was an early sign that a project built on a tax refund and a shoestring budget had found an audience. Within a few years the story returned as a Netflix series, running from 2017 to 2021. Simien later directed a Disney theme park movie and was named to run a Disney+ series called Lando, based on the character Lando Calrissian. What carried him from a crowdfunding page to that red carpet moment, and later to a quiet exit from the Lando project? And why would he later wonder, in his own words, whether the industry simply didn't want to say why he had been pushed aside?

• 2. Houston Roots and Early Jobs

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  Houston, Texas, is where Justin Simien was born, into a Catholic household that included a father who died while Justin was still young. He grew up in the metro area and attended the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. After graduating, he studied film at Chapman University in California.

  Simien held several industry jobs in Los Angeles before he ever directed a feature. He worked as a social media manager at Sony Television, a publicity assistant at Focus Features, and a publicity coordinator at Paramount Pictures. None of those roles involved directing, the ambition he had already started chasing on his own time.

• 3. Crowdfunding a Debut

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  In 2006, Simien directed a short film called Rings. He made two more shorts before Dear White People: My Women: Inst Msgs and INST MSGS (Instant Messages), both released in 2009. That same year, 2006, Simien started writing what would become Dear White People.

  The predominantly white campus of Chapman University fed directly into that script, by Simien's own account of his feelings there.

  In 2012, Simien funded a concept trailer using his own tax refund. He then launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, aiming to raise $25,000. The response was overwhelming: he raised $40,000 instead.

  Dear White People premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Category at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival on the 18th of January 2014. Its theatrical release in the United States followed on the 17th of October 2014. In its opening weekend, the film grossed $344,000 across just eleven locations, a $31,273 per-theatre average.

  The film also won the Audience Award at the 2014 San Francisco International Film Festival. Variety had already flagged Simien on its 2013 list of "10 Directors to Watch." That early recognition arrived a full three years before the story found its second life as a television series.

• 4. The Netflix Adaptation

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  On the 5th of May 2016, Lionsgate announced a deal to turn Dear White People into a television series for Netflix. Simien was set to write the first ten episodes himself.

  The series arrived in April 2017 to critical acclaim. Peter Debruge, writing for Variety, praised its writing, directing, social commentary, and cast. The New York Times praised the show's examination of appropriation, assimilation, and conflict.

  A second season was renewed in June 2017 and released in May 2018. A third season followed: renewed on the 21st of June 2018, it was released in August 2019. The fourth and final season was renewed on the 2nd of October 2019 and released in September 2021. By the time that last season aired, Simien had already moved into work on a very different kind of project. It was one built around horror and comedy rather than campus politics.

• 5. Bad Hair and Culture Machine

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  Bad Hair, a horror comedy released in 2020, credits Simien as writer, director, and songwriter. He also appears onscreen, playing a character named Reggie "MC McCree" Watson.

  The film had its world premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Hulu acquired its distribution rights shortly afterward. Neon gave it a limited theatrical release on the 16th of October 2020. It moved to digital streaming on Hulu on the 23rd of October 2020. Critics gave the film mixed reviews.

  In 2019, Simien launched his own production company, Culture Machine. Culture Machine gave him a vehicle of his own, right as Disney and Paramount both came calling with much bigger properties.

• 6. A Bigger Canvas

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  At Disney Investor Day 2020, Simien was announced as showrunner for a new Disney+ series about Lando Calrissian, titled Lando.

  In April 2021, Simien signed on to direct a new film based on Disney's Haunted Mansion theme park attraction. Haunted Mansion reached theatres on the 28th of July 2023, to mostly negative reviews, and became a box office bomb.

  Paramount Television Studios later signed Simien to an overall deal. Under it, he began adapting Geoff Johns's comic Geiger for television.

  Simien's slate also grew to include the documentary mini-series Ladies First: A Story of Women in Hip-Hop, which ran four episodes in 2023. Hollywood Black, another four-episode documentary mini-series, followed in 2024. Further projects included a future Flashdance series and Plan A, co-created with Steven J. Kung and Leann Bowen. He also co-created an untitled Star Trek comedy series with Tawny Newsome and Alex Kurtzman. Of that entire slate, it was the Lando series, announced back in 2020, that caused the most public confusion.

• 7. Losing Lando

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  In July 2023, Simien revealed he had received no updates on Lando since 2020.

  Later that same month, reports surfaced that Simien had departed the project because of his commitments to Haunted Mansion. Donald Glover and his brother, Stephen Glover, were named as his replacements.

  Earlier that same day, an interview with The Hollywood Reporter had already captured his uncertainty. Asked whether he was still writing Lando, Simien said, "I am attached, I think, but I don't really know." He wondered if he had been quietly let go. "Am I too Black? Am I too queer? And people just don't want to say that?" he asked. By that point, comparisons to another prominent filmmaker had already followed Simien for years, comparisons he has consistently pushed back against.

• 8. Influences and Life Offstage

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  Do the Right Thing is the Spike Lee film Simien credits with "showing him that it's possible to make these types of black films." Even so, Simien has resisted being compared to Lee directly. He has said he doesn't want to be "the next Spike Lee," but rather "the next Justin Simien."

  Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman round out the influences Simien has named.

  A cameo in the 2009 short INST MSGS put Simien briefly onscreen. So did a small role as Jerry Skyler in a Dear White People episode titled "Volume 3: Chapter 7." The instinct to appear inside his own work runs through his filmography.

  Rick Proctor, a portrait photographer and comedian, was identified as Simien's husband on Celebrity Family Feud, season 9, episode 3. It stands as one of the only public glimpses into a side of his life that rarely surfaces in interviews about his films.