Spike Lee's Chiraq gets Amazon release – and Oscars push

Streaming service Amazon will follow rival Netflix in releasing its first home-produced film, Spike Lee’s Chiraq, in time for next year’s Oscar race.

Lee’s feature, which he finished shooting last week, is a musical comedy set in violent inner-city Chicago and follows a woman (Teyonah Parris) who goes on sexual strike to protest against black-on-black gun violence, in a narrative based on Aristophanes’s Lysistrata.

The film, which also stars Wesley Snipes and Jennifer Hudson, will be released in the US in December, allowing it to qualify for the 2016 Oscars. Amazon Studios, Amazon’s original film arm, plan to release their titles in theatres before making them available via their streaming service. Netflix, in comparison, will launch their own potential Oscar contender, Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation, online at the same time as the theatrical release, a move that has angered some large North American cinema chains.

Lee has previously been wary of digital distribution and has described the experience of watching a film on a mobile phone as “heartbreaking”. He has, however, embraced online crowdfunding. His Kickstarter project for “bloody, funny, sexy movie” Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, about humans who are addicted to blood, reached its $1.25m goal in 2013. It had a limited theatrical run in the US before being released through video on demand.

Chiraq is set in Englewood, an area of Chicago that has been described as one of the city’s most dangerous neighbourhoods. The film’s title, a slang term that likens the situation in the midwestern American city to the war in Iraq, has caused controversy, with Mayor Rahm Emanuel telling Lee he “wasn’t happy” with the comparison.

“I told him also that there are very good people that live in Englewood who are raising their family and there’s a lot of positive things that are happening in Englewood mainly driven by the people that make up Englewood,” Emanuel said at a press conference in April.

“Please don’t be fooled by the title ... this new Spike Lee joint will be something very special,” said Lee, who has not expressed any desire to rename the film.