Amazon To Compete with HBO’s ‘Confederate’ With Reparations-Themed Show

'Black America' focuses on freed slaves who form their own country.

August 2, 2017 9:33 am
Will Packer attends 2017 American Black Film Festival on June 14, 2017 in Miami, Florida. He has partnered with Amazon to create a counter-program to HBO's Confederate.
Will Packer attends 2017 American Black Film Festival on June 14, 2017 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Thaddaeus McAdams/Film Magic)

Amazon is hoping to snag the viewers who disprove of HBO’s upcoming slavery drama Confederate with their own alternative-history series, Black America. 

Black America will also take place in a universe where the South has seceded from the Union. However, instead of focusing on slavery as a modern-day institution, like Confederate, the show will focus on freed slaves who form their own country, New Colonia.

The freed slaves will be from Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana and the new country was given to them as reparations for America’s “original sin,” reports USA TodayThe new country has been at peace with the United State for twenty years following a 150-year war.

But now, the two countries are seeing a role reversal: New Colonia is emerging as a global power, while America slowly slides into a decline.

William Packer, from Straight Outta Compton, is partnering with Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder. Their team is working with historians to be factually correct in their storytelling.

Amazon announced the project earlier this year, but had few details to give. However, it now appears to be positioning Black America as counter-programming to David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’s Confederate. Confederate has received a lot of criticism on social media, including the trending hashtag #NoConfederate during Sunday’s episode of Game of Thrones.

Packer did not answer direct questions about Confederate, according to USA Today and Deadline but he did say, “Slavery is far too real and far too painful, and we still see the manifestations of it today as a country for me to ever view that as a form of entertainment.”

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