
Six years ago, The New Yorker published a profile of Donald Glover. It included an overheard conversation between Glover and his Atlanta co-star Zazie Beetz during some downtime while working on an episode of the show:
After a few more takes, Glover said, “I have an idea for a movie about a hipster guy surviving in his house after the end of the world—no canned food, no water. None of us are equipped to survive for even two weeks.”
“Whoa,” Beetz said.
“I watch ‘Cast Away’ so much”—the Robert Zemeckis film in which Tom Hanks is stranded on a tropical island—“because he’s just scrapping shit together, and it feels so real. There’s barely any spectacle. People want that right now. They just want to know how to survive when the world ends.”
Judging by the trailer of Bando Stone & The New World, the forthcoming feature starring, produced by, and directed by Glover, that lean movie idea has expanded into something bigger and more bombastic, something that can at least be pitched like an action-adventure.
In his guise as Childish Gambino, Glover adds yet another hyphen to his ample duties on the film. Childish Gambino provides the soundtrack, which also serves as his fifth full-length album. This past week brought the first single, “Lithonia,” a thick, swirling cut that lands somewhere between soul and rock. The repeated refrain “Nobody gives a fuck,” sung with crisp conviction by Glover, is ridiculously catchy and, let’s face it, provides the anthem we need at this particularly dismal social and political moment.
Bando Stone & The New World, which is reportedly Glover’s final album under the name Childish Gambino, is scheduled for release in July. The release date of the film hasn’t yet been announced.
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