Shaka King

Shaka King is an American director, producer, and screenwriter who has worked for films and television. He was born on 7th March 1980 in Crown Heights but moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant, where he grew up. Both these places are located in Brooklyn, New York Click to look into! >> Read More... . He was an only child. His parents were both public school teachers. King studied in a private school in Bay Ridge for his middle and high school years, and it was in high school he discovered his love for creative writing.

He attended Vassar College as a political science major. His roommate and best friend, Kristan Sprague Bio coming soon... >> Read More... , was a film major in need of a partner for his junior-year production courses, so King agreed to join him for the class. After Vassar, he attended the film program at New York University Tisch School of the Arts and was a student of renowned filmmaker and actor Spike Lee Spike Lee also known as Shelton Jackson is an Amer >> Read More... . The thesis he wrote for his master’s program became his first feature film, Newlyweeds, released on 18 September 2013, which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

King’s second feature film, Judas and the Black Messiah was a critical success. It first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 1st January 2021 and was released by Warner Bros Pictures in the US on 12th February. The film received six Oscar nominations at the 93rd Academy Awards cross categories like Best Picture, Best Original Song, and Best Supporting Actor. King received critical praise for his direction, cinematography, and screenplay.

King has been nominated for many awards, including Writers Guild of America Awards, Producers Guild of America Awards, NAACP Image awards. His works include short films like DuFrayne 7th Grade Guidance Counselor (2010), Mulignans (2015), LeZercism (2017), and television shows like High Maintenance (2016), Random Acts of Flyness (2018), People of Earth (2016) and Shrill (2019).