'Blacklist' Star Harry Lennix Talks About Making a Gospel Musical

Lennix calls Revival! a combination of Jesus Christ Superstar and The Wiz, and it’s part of his new organization, Black Faith Entertainment, which targets the black community. But appeal to a crossover audience is also possible considering that the first blockbuster film with a black cast, Black Panther, made $1.3 billion, faith-based films are booming at the box office, and 81 million viewers have watched classic musicals such as Jesus Christ Superstar Live! performed live on TV in recent years. “Those three things — black films, faith films and live musicals — are all booming,” says Lennix, “but I don’t think they’ve ever been combined in this way before Revival!”

Revival! is inspired by Bob Fosse, who combined musical stage scenes with an ongoing story set in a realistic location in All That Jazz and Cabaret, and also by the dual realities of The Matrix. “We start our movie in a theater,” says Lennix, “and then it expands into a real-world historical blend of time that is hyper-real, surreal.” The film mixes musical numbers onstage, location shoots (Satan tempts Jesus above the Hollywood sign) and animation. In one scene, Lennix’s Pilate strides from a modern corporate office to a World War I battlefield to the Bolshevik Revolution to Jesus’ day. “That shot was inspired by Zack Snyder’s 300, where he uses a green screen and projects a very vibrant, hyperreal scene. I got a lot of ideas from working with The Matrix directors, the Wachowskis, too.”

Lennix, who believes getting The Blacklist role at the very moment he was about to quit the business was providential, thinks somebody up there likes his idea of faith films that tap a wide market. “I don’t believe in any way that these things are coincidence. I really don’t. I think The Blacklist came along so that Revival! could exist. I believe my willingness to walk away from it all created that opportunity. I believe that opportunity is not for my benefit alone, but to engender this new idea of what we’re calling ‘black faith entertainment,’ to continue to prove that quality, adult-level entertainment like Revival! and The Blacklist can exist and endure.”