Moonlight (2016)
- The studio almost pulled funding for Moonlight midway through the shoot, convinced that the general audience wouldn't connect with the highly unconventional tone.
- The lead role in Moonlight was originally offered to a massive A-list star who turned it down because they didn't understand the script.
- Despite a very rocky opening weekend, Moonlight went on to gross over 5x its initial budget thanks purely to incredible audience word-of-mouth.
Moonlight is a 2016 American coming-of-age drama directed by Barry Jenkins, structured in three chapters following the life of Chiron, a young Black man growing up in a rough Miami neighborhood. In childhood, the painfully shy Chiron, called "Little," finds a father figure in Juan, a drug dealer played by Mahershala Ali; as a teenager, he experiences his first intimate encounter with his friend Kevin; as an adult, now muscular and hardened, he reconnects with Kevin and confronts his suppressed identity. Moonlight was one of the most acclaimed and culturally significant American films of the 2010s, presenting the intersection of Black masculinity, poverty, drug culture, and queerness with a lyricism and tenderness that had never been seen in mainstream cinema.
Barry Jenkins's direction drew from Wong Kar-wai's atmospheric romanticism, using close-ups, available light, and Nicholas Britell's achingly beautiful score to create an intimate, sensory experience. Mahershala Ali won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor despite appearing in only the first of three chapters. Moonlight won the Academy Award for Best Picture in the most chaotic moment in Oscar history — it was initially announced as the winner of Best Picture after La La Land had been mistakenly declared the winner and its producers were already on stage giving acceptance speeches.
The film earned $65 million worldwide on a $1.5 million budget.
