A24 has released the first trailer for a wild and crazy dark comedy titled Zola, which first premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. The movie is based on a 148-part Twitter thread from 2015 that was written by Aziah “Zola” Wells King who said, “wanna hear a story about why me & this bitch here fell out???????? It’s kind of long but full of suspense.”
The film centers on “two girls bond over their ‘hoeism’ and become fast friends. What’s supposed to be a trip from Detroit to Florida turns into a weekend from hell.”
In the story, “Zola meets Stefani at a restaurant where Zola waitresses, and the two immediately click over pole dancing. Only a day after they exchange numbers, Stefani invites Zola on a cross-country road trip, where the goal is to make as much money as possible dancing in Florida strip clubs. Zola agrees, and suddenly she is trapped in the craziest, most unexpected trip of her life.”
Taylour Paige stars as Zola and Riley Keough plays Stefani in the film. They are joined by Nicholas Braun, Colman Domingo, and Ari’el Stachel.
In our review of the film, Corrin said, “The fact that this movie is based on tweets should tell you right away that this isn’t going to be a typical movie. There’s a lot of creativity and originality with the narration and other aspects of it, and I enjoyed it, but I think by the end it does get a little confusing because it is based on information that the real Zola later admitted was embellished in order to increase shock value.”
Zola was directed by Janicza Bravo and it will be released in select US theaters on June 30th.