“King Richard” is ruling Telluride.
Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Warner Bros.
biopic about Richard Williams, the hard-driving father of straight-outta-Compton tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, played to a packed house Friday afternoon, building Best Actor buzz for its star and producer, Will Smith.
He held the rights to the tennis duo’s story, but it was Jada Pinkett-Smith who suggested her husband meet with Green after she served on the Sundance jury in 2018, the year that the young director broke out with “Monsters and Men.”This full-bodied performance marks Smith’s best shot at an Oscar in years.
He’s been nominated twice, both for roles in which he had to fully inhabit living, breathing people: Boxer Muhammad Ali in Michael Mann’s “Ali” in 2002, and Chris Gardner, a man who rose from homelessness to become a stockbroker and motivational speaker, in Gabrielle Muccino’s 2007 “The Pursuit of Happyness.
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