Malcolm X premiered in Beverly Hills, CA on 17 November 1992 before opening in theaters the next day.
Producer Marvin Worth had acquired the film rights to Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) in 1967, and despite making the Academy Award-winning documentary Malcolm X in 1972 (directed by Arnold Perl), he still wanted to make a dramatized film version.
James Baldwin and Perl had worked on a screenplay starting in 1968, but after Perl died and Baldwin left the project (”I would rather be horsewhipped, or incarcerated in the forthright bedlam of Bellevue, than repeat the adventure,” Baldwin wrote), the project went through a number of writers, directors, and stars (David Mamet, Sidney Lumet, Eddie Murphy, and Richard Pryor to name a few) before Warner Bros. brought Norman Jewison on board to direct. Jewison cast Denzel Washington to star (they had worked together on 1984′s A Soldier’s Story), but Spike Lee became a vocal critic of choosing a white director and Jewison left the project (Jewison would later direct Washington in another biopic, 1999′s The Hurricane, for which Washington would receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor).
Lee rewrote Baldwin and Perl’s script (the Baldwin family asked that James Baldwin’s name be removed from the credits), and protests led by poet Amiri Baraka accused Lee of sanitizing Malcolm X’s life ("We will not let Malcolm X's life be trashed to make middle-class Negroes sleep easier").
Warner Bros. capped the budget at $28 million, and as Lee exceeded the budget (as well as the imposed 2 hour 15 minute time limit of the film), they refused to provide additional financing. Lee contributed $2 million of his own money, as well as funds from Tracy Chapman, Bill Cosby, Janet Jackson, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and Prince ("This is not a loan. They are not investing in the film. These are black folks with some money who came to the rescue of the movie. As a result, this film will be my version. . . . I will do the film the way it ought to be, and it will be over three hours.“). The final budget was around $35 million, and the final cut was 201 minutes.
The film earned more than $73 million at the box office (Warner Bros, still claimed the movie lost more than $30 million) and was nominated for 2 Academy Awards: Best Actor and Best Costume Design (Ruth E. Carter). Al Pacino received the Oscar for Scent of a Woman.
