The movie Kevin Costner couldn’t walk away from: “I felt the film had to be made”
To put it mildly, Hollywood has had a difficult relationship with race from the very beginning. From DW Griffith’s atrociously bigoted The Birth of a Nation to the inexplicable reverence for movies like Driving Miss Daisy and Green Book, racism and its close cousins – implicit bias, stereotyping, and oversimplification – have been some of the most consistent throughlines in blockbuster cinema. Then came Kevin Costner. Or, at least, that’s what he seemed to be hoping.
Known for putting his money where his intuition is, Costner has poured several small fortunes into projects he’s believed in, to varying degrees of success. The actor gave up several million dollars to ensure that his critically acclaimed directorial debut Dances With Wolves could make it over the finish line in 1990, for example, which was a gamble that clearly paid off. On the other side of the proverbial coin, however, he sank $38million into Horizon: An American Saga – Part I, a baggy, three-hour western that went on to bomb at the box office when it was released in 2024.
That’s why it was basically par for the course when, in 2014, the actor threw $9m into a film called Black or White, explaining that he felt that he had no other option. Following the story of an attorney (Costner) who is embroiled in a custody battle with a character played by Octavia Spencer over their mixed-race granddaughter, it is a not-particularly-subtle exploration of racial bias and the potential for harmony.
For Costner, however, it was crucial that it get made. “I really couldn’t turn my back on the film once I read the script,” he told an interviewer shortly before the film was released. “When I couldn’t get anybody else to make the film, I walked down the hall to my wife and said, ‘I have to share this story.’ I said, ‘We have to be really honest with it and not soften one word. Let’s just stay with it,’ and that’s what we did.”
He went on to say that the script jumped out at him due to its bluntness. “It felt like there were things in the script that a lot of people wanted to say and wish they could say but don’t know how to actually articulate it,” he explained. “The film doesn’t pull a single punch. It’s not politically correct, but it’s not cruel. It’s actually warm. People who feel worn about by this race thing, I hope they see it.”
No matter how you feel about the whole “race thing”, chances are, Black or White won’t land quite as cathartically as Costner predicted. Upon its release, critics widely dismissed it as a tone-deaf melodrama that fails to live up to its good intentions.
Although the film didn’t become a major talking point, it was a symptom of a broader moment in Hollywood. Released at the beginning of 2015, it coincided with the beginning of the #OscarsSoWhite movement. That same month, the hashtag went viral on social media in response to all 20 acting Oscar nominees being white. Although Black or White tried to handle race in a refreshingly blunt fashion, it was merely further evidence that Hollywood was ready for a reckoning.
