‘Black America’ Creator Reveals A Diff Kind Of Alt-History To ‘Confederate’

The crew behind Black America, the upcoming Amazon drama series exploring an alternative history in which African Americans were granted reparations, has revealed more details about the show – and if you’re speculating that they dropped those deets to differentiate their show from Confederate, the massively-slated project from Game Of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, you’re actually 100% correct.

Speaking to Deadline, co-creator Will Packer said the project will focus on the fictional nation of New Colonia, which comprises the real-world states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. In Black America’s world, freed African Americans formed that sovereign nation, and the show intends to examine a modern-day relationship between New Colonia and the remaining United States.

While the project (also helmed by The Boondocks‘ mastermind Aaron McGruder) was announced earlier this year, it was largely undefined. This mass drop of details was spurred along by the backlash to Confederate, another upcoming alt-history which will show a world in which slavery was never outlawed in America’s southern states.

“It felt this was the appropriate time to make sure that audiences and the creative community knew that there was a project that preexisted and we are pretty far down the road with it,” Packer said.

While he didn’t expressly diss Confederate as the final project hasn’t yet been released, Packer – himself an African American man – told Deadline “slavery is far too real and far too painful, and we still see the manifestations of it today as a country for me to ever view that as a form of entertainment.”

Packer said his project will instead ask “what if reparations were given, what would this country and that alternate country look like today, how would Americans look, our communities, relations”.

There’s not yet a release date for this one, but we may be set for a massively compelling divergence in prestige dramas in the years to come.

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