WASHINGTON – Howard University students will have a chance to be among the first to view and discuss Us, the next terrifying thriller from visionary Oscar^® award-winning filmmaker Jordan Peele (Get Out), when Universal Pictures and Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions presents an exclusive, theatrical experience campus screening on March 20 in Cramton Auditorium. The screening will be immediately followed by a Q&A with writer-director-producer Peele and the film’s stars: Oscar^® winner Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave) and Black Panther star Winston Duke. Us will open in theaters nationwide on March 22, 2019. 

Howard University’s logo is prominently featured in the film’s trailer, which was released on Christmas morning 2018 -- a gift that was met with delight by Howard students, alumni and fans nationwide.

Set in present day along the iconic Northern California coastline, Us, from Monkeypaw Productions, stars Oscar^® winner Lupita Nyong’o as Adelaide Wilson, a woman returning to her beachside childhood home with her husband, Gabe (Black Panther’s Winston Duke), and their two children (Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex) for an idyllic summer getaway. 

Haunted by an unexplainable and unresolved trauma from her past and compounded by a string of eerie coincidences, Adelaide feels her paranoia elevate to high-alert as she grows increasingly certain that something bad is going to befall her family.

After spending a tense beach day with their friends, the Tylers (Emmy winner Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Cali Sheldon, Noelle Sheldon), Adelaide and her family return to their vacation home to discover the silhouettes of four figures standing in their driveway. Us pits an ordinary American family against a terrifying and uncanny opponent: doppelgängers of themselves. 

As one of the nation’s premiere institutions of higher learning, Howard University often comes to mind in discussions of top colleges or historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Since its founding in 1867, the university has upheld the mission to recruit and educate primarily students of color who pursue careers in the arts, medicine and law. This reputation of excellence is regularly highlighted in popular culture through television and film references as well as through the work of Howard’s notable alumni such as Thurgood Marshall, Toni Morrison, Phylicia Rashad, Vernon Jordan, and Taraji P. Henson, to name a few.

Students may pick up tickets for the film beginning Monday, March 18 at 10 a.m. at the Cramton Box Office. The screening will be held Wednesday, March 20 at 5 p.m. Doors open at 4 p.m. Seating will be first come, first served. For more information on the film, visit: https://www.usmovie.com/. 

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Media Contact: Alonda Thomas, Alonda.Thomas@Howard.edu