Childish Gambino & Rihanna’s Guava Island Film Will Premiere On YouTube’s Coachella Livestream
Guava Island is a new film starring Donald Glover and Robyn Fenty, the multi-hyphenate superstars also known as Childish Gambino and Rihanna. Glover premiered a trailer for the project at his PHAROS festival in New Zealand last November, and now it looks like the film will premiere this weekend. As Pitchfork points out, YouTube confirmed today that Guava Island will be part of its livestream from Coachella’s first weekend.
Gambino, of course, is one of this year’s Coachella headliners, which contributed to the wave of speculation when Guava Island ads began appearing on Spotify last week. The ads indicate Guava Island will premiere “SATURDAY NIGHT | April 13.” Gambino’s headlining performance is Friday, April 12. Although he’ll go onstage after midnight EDT and his performance will likely continue until after midnight PDT, thereby crossing over into April 13, most would describe the timeframe as “early Saturday morning,” not “Saturday night.” YouTube has not specified when the Guava Island livestream will air, but a press release describes it as a “one-time premiere.”
Besides Glover and Rihanna, Guava Island also stars Letitia Wright and Nonso Anozie. It was shot in Cuba last year and directed by Hiro Murai, who directs most Childish Gambino music videos (including “This Is America”) and is heavily involved with Glover’s acclaimed TV series Atlanta. Crack Magazine recently reported that cinematographer Christian Sprenger, who has also worked with Glover on Atlanta, listed Guava Island as a “visual album” on his resume, leading to speculation that the film might double as the final Childish Gambino album that’s supposedly coming soon.
It certainly would make sense for Glover to drop some new tunes before his big showcase set — unless he intends to keep stringing out Childish Gambino’s farewell tour indefinitely. For what it’s worth, the movie is rumored to be in the action/crime genre. Here’s a bootleg of the trailer:
#guavaisland @rihanna pic.twitter.com/thWN6QoQYr
— courtney (@purelylorde) November 24, 2018
In other livestream news, YouTube will stream Coachella’s second weekend for the first time this year. Coachella’s YouTube channel has a list of the artists whose set will stream during the first weekend.