Lin-Manuel Miranda group pulls movie release in solidarity with protesters

“We Are Freestyle Love Supreme” won’t premiere Friday on Hulu while “collective attention” is on other issues.

By Associated Press

This image released by Hulu shows a scene from “We Are Freestyle Love Supreme.” — This image released by Hulu shows a scene from the documentary “We Are Freestyle Love Supreme.”

NEW YORK — Just two days before it was to begin streaming, “We Are Freestyle Love Supreme,” a documentary about the hip-hop improv group with Lin-Manuel Miranda and friends, has postponed its release out of solidarity with protesters.

The group announced the postponement Wednesday, citing that our “collective attention” is turned toward more pressing concerns. The film had been scheduled to debut on Hulu on Friday.

“Today our country, our world struggles to reach an end to this systemic racial injustice, intolerance, police brutality and hate,” Freestyle Love Supreme said in a statement on Twitter. “We add our voices to that fight.”

“We Are Freestyle Love Supreme,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, is the first movie to put off its release due the unrest following the death of George Floyd.

“We are for the freedom of expression, creativity, inclusion, equality, and most of all, love,” the group said. “Our work has always centered around creating a safe space for those ideals to flourish. Our show does not exist without the operations of brilliant black artists that created two of our most beloved American art forms, jazz and hip-hop.”

“We Are Freestyle Love Supreme” chronicles the off-Broadway show that Miranda and several of his “Hamilton” collaborators regularly put on before “In the Heights” and “Hamilton” made them famous. The film captures the group reuniting for a Broadway run that concluded earlier this year.

No new release date was announced.