Elba’s highly-anticipated urban cowboy tale will make its bow very soon indeed.
We’ve known for a while that this one was coming, but Netflix has now announced a release date of 2nd April for the Idris Elba-headlined Concrete Cowboy, another high-profile project to be picked up by the streaming platform and its sizeable chequebook.
Charting the developing relationship between an estranged father and son (played by Elba and Stranger Things’ Caleb McLaughlin respectively), the film takes place in Philadelphia where an actual community of black, city-dwelling cowboys has been established for over a century now.
The synopsis for the film itself reads as follows:
Based on the 2009 novel Ghetto Cowboy by Greg Neri, the film is about a 15-year-old boy, Cole, (McLaughlin) from Detroit who is sent to live with his estranged father (Elba) in Philadelphia, where he learns about local urban cowboys and its neighbourhood legacy. Set against a background of growing gentrification, Cole must contend between his interest and respect for his father’s community, and his reemerging friendship with a troubled cousin.
The film marks the debut directorial feature for the project’s helmer, Ricky Staub. Early reviews have been positive, especially warming to the film’s depiction of this fascinating American subculture of black cowboys, which has largely been ignored in the past hundred years of cinema. Several of the real Philadelphian cowboys appear in roles within the film too.
Elba will also be appearing this year in the ensemble for James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. What’s more, he’ll also be returning to the Western genre (most likely because he wears a cowboy hat so well), in The Harder They Fall opposite LaKeith Stanfield and Regina King. You can mark us as excited for that one too, which is currently slated for a 2021 release.
If you need further evidence of Elba’s Stetson-wearing prowess, Netflix has released a poster for Concrete Cowboy which you can check out below, with a trailer sure to follow soon.
—
Thank you for visiting! If you’d like to support our attempts to make a non-clickbaity movie website:
Follow Film Stories on Twitter here, and on Facebook here.
Buy our Film Stories and Film Stories Junior print magazines here.
Become a Patron here.
