The Trailer for ‘Zola’ Is Here and It’s Just as Wild as the Original Tweets

After an outrageous series of Tweets went viral in 2015, scores of people were captivated by the saga of Zola and her new friend Jessica and their wild road trip from Michigan to Florida.

Penned by A’Ziah Wells King, the story involved kidnapping, a shooting, sex trafficking, a suicide attempt and a pimp named “Z” and was told over the course of 148 Tweets.

Writer and filmmaker Janicza Bravo, who first became aware of the Tweets via a group chat with her girlfriends, saw an oppotunity to bring the wild ride to the big screen and got to work making the stranger-than-fiction story into a film.

That film, aptly titled Zola made its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020 and audiences were just as entranced by the adaptation as they had been by the salacious social media posts.

Starring Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Colman Domingo and Nicholas Braun Zola will premiere globally on June 30 and promises to take viewers on the trip of a lifetime.

Speaking to Variety about the film and how it came to be so unexpectedly funny, Bravo credited King for her ability to find humour in the direst of situations.

“King managed to extrapolate all of this humour and tension and stress and anxiety and it just like got me,” Bravo said.

“It was electric. I could feel the blood coursing through my veins and I wanted it and I thought that, like, only a Black girl could’ve experienced that and processed it and exorcised it. In that way, only a person who is innately adept at engaging with their trauma is able to take a step away from it, retell the story and take a hold of their narrative.”

Check out the trailer for Zola, below.