The A24 movie Sing Sing is about to redefine the concept of a wide release. On January 17, the Colman Domingo film will return to more than 500 theaters — and become the first movie to be simultaneously available to nearly a million incarcerated people across the U.S.
Sing Sing, which follows a group of men enrolled in a prison theater program, will screen inside correctional facilities in California, New York, Texas and 43 other states. The unusual release is thanks to a collaboration between A24, Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), the real-life nonprofit organization on which the film is based, and Edovo, a nonprofit that creates curricula for incarcerated people to access via tablets in more than 1100 correctional facilities across the country.
“Storytelling has an incredible way of sparking hope and building connections, even in the toughest circumstances,” says Edovo founder and CEO Brian Hill. “With Sing Sing, we’re giving incarcerated individuals an opportunity to see themselves in a story of resilience and transformation, and to feel inspired to imagine new possibilities for their own lives. “
Sing Sing, which was originally released last summer and made $2.9 million at the box office, has since earned a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Domingo and three Independent Spirit Award nominations, including best feature. Domingo, who was nominated for an Oscar last year for his performance in Netflix’s Rustin, is considered an Oscar frontrunner this year for his role in Sing Sing as Divine G, a man who is wrongfully convicted.
Outside a few professional actors, including Domingo and Oscar nominee Paul Raci, the film is populated with formerly incarcerated performers, the majority of them alumni of the RTA program, including Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin and Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez.
“My journey through education and the arts gave me hope during my wrongful conviction, restoring my faith in humanity, sparking a culture of redemption during my incarceration,” Velazquez said. “By providing access to the movie Sing Sing we can transform lives in ways beyond our imagination.”
As a movie, Sing Sing has already broken ground in a number of ways. Filmmakers Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley paid everyone on the set—from the PAs to Domingo at the top of the call sheet — the same wage, and everyone involved in the production received equity.
The movie’s rollout has been equally unorthodox. After A24 acquired Sing Sing at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023, the indie studio held their premiere inside the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N. Y. in June and screened it for an audience of incarcerated men at the San Quentin Film Festival in California, the first film festival ever held inside a U.S. prison, in October.
“We represent y’all,” Maclin said, speaking to the incarcerated audience members at the San Quentin film festival Q&A. “Thanks for the inspiration.”
There is one presumably interested audience who won’t be able to see the movie Sing Sing this week: the men who live in the prison that inspired it. Sing Sing Correctional Facility is not yet one of the prisons that has access to Edovo’s tablet content.
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