A courtroom drama built around a single jury room is coming to Uptown Charlotte, and it's bringing its stars with it. Actor Leon and director Wes Miller will present Wildcards to a Charlotte audience at Mint Museum Uptown on Sunday, August 30, with a screening followed by a conversation with the filmmakers and cast.
Wildcards is a courtroom drama about race, justice and belief, following jury deliberations in the trial of a privileged young man accused of sexually assaulting a young Black woman, according to WCCB Charlotte. The film stars Leon alongside Elise Neal and Aries Spears, and is directed by Wes Miller, who is a former civil-rights trial lawyer, the station reports. In the film, Leon plays veteran criminal defense lawyer Greg Sims, who carries a 25-year winning streak into a case against prosecutor James Jones, played by Spears, according to Rotten Tomatoes.
Neal's character serves as the only Black woman in the jury deliberation room, a role she reportedly built from her own real-life experience serving jury duty, per footage shared on YouTube. Leon, born Leon Preston Robinson, made his professional screen debut in Madonna's 1989 “Like a Prayer” music video before landing starring roles in The Five Heartbeats and Disney's Cool Runnings, according to WBLS. Miller previously directed Leon alongside Bruce Willis and Frank Grillo in the 2022 heist feature A Day to Die, the outlet notes.
A Real-Time Shoot Built Like a Stage Play
Miller structured and filmed Wildcards in real time like a stage play, shooting one location and lens setup per day with no automated dialogue replacement or safety takes, according to the film's published screenplay listed on Lulu. That approach mirrors Miller's own path from the courtroom to the camera: he wrote and directed the 2023 BET+ legal thriller Call Her King, starring Naturi Naughton as a judge navigating a courtroom hostage crisis, marking the inaugural production under his BLacklight banner.
Wildcards was financed by BLacklight Entertainment, the production company Miller co-founded with producer Andrew van den Houten to create opportunities for Black filmmakers and underrepresented talent. The film won Best Narrative Feature at the Essence Film Festival before opening in theaters nationwide on August 27 under distributors BLacklight and Dark Star Pictures.
Micheaux-Inspired Tour Lands in Charlotte
Rather than relying solely on a traditional studio rollout, Miller organized a self-distributed, city-by-city screening tour for Wildcards, citing 20th-century Black cinema pioneer Oscar Micheaux as inspiration for bypassing conventional studio barriers, per a post on Facebook. The tour brings cast members directly into local venues for panel discussions, and Charlotte's stop lands at one of the city's flagship cultural institutions.
Mint Museum Uptown opened in 2010 at the Levine Center for the Arts as an expansion of North Carolina's first art museum, which traces back to 1936 inside a former U.S. Branch Mint building, according to background compiled from Wikipedia. Hoodline has previously covered Caravaggio's rare arrival Uptown, another example of the venue drawing major cultural programming to the city's arts district.
Sunday's event pairs the screening with a live conversation featuring the filmmakers and cast, giving Charlotte audiences a direct line to the people behind the film's courtroom-set exploration of race and reasonable doubt.
