Boots Riley Returns: 'I Love Boosters' Trailer Drops Ahead of SXSW Premiere
The Velvet Gang Rides Again
Keke Palmer leads a shoplifting revolution in Boots Riley's wildest vision yet
The wait is over. Boots Riley—the Oakland visionary who gave us talking horses, white voice code-switching, and the most audacious critique of late capitalism in recent cinema—has returned with his second feature film. And if today's trailer drop is any indication, I Love Boosters is about to shake up 2026 the way Sorry to Bother You electrified 2018.
Neon released the first teaser trailer this morning for I Love Boosters, and it's everything fans of Riley's singular aesthetic could hope for: vibrant color palettes, razor-sharp dialogue, surreal visuals, and a premise that somehow makes shoplifting feel like revolutionary praxis. The film premieres as the opening night selection at South by Southwest Film & TV Festival on March 12, 2026, before hitting theaters nationwide on May 22.
Meet The Velvet Gang
At the center of Riley's latest provocation is Keke Palmer as Corvette, the charismatic leader of a professional shoplifting crew known as the Velvet Gang. "I shop here a lot, and I feel like I should have it all," Palmer's character declares in the trailer. "I just want to take it all home, heat it up and shoot it out my eyes. I just feel like, 'Give it to me. It's mine anyway.'"
The premise is deceptively simple: a group of women survive by "boosting"—stealing high-end fashion from luxury retailers and reselling it at discounted prices to their communities. As Naomi Ackie's character explains with perfect deadpan delivery, "It's like community service." Taylour Paige adds her own spin: "I call it Triple F: Fashion Forward Philanthropy. I know how to spell philanthropy—branding, though."
"I shop here a lot, and I feel like I should have it all. I just want to take it all home, heat it up and shoot it out my eyes. I just feel like, 'Give it to me. It's mine anyway.'"
— Corvette (Keke Palmer) in I Love Boosters
But this isn't just a heist film. When a ruthless fashion CEO—played with apparent relish by Demi Moore—steals Corvette's ideas and profits from them, the Velvet Gang's next target becomes personal. What begins as payback spirals into something much larger: an unintended revolution that challenges the entire fashion industry's exploitation of Black creativity and labor.
The Anti-Capitalist Auteur Returns
Riley's filmography has never been subtle about its politics. The former frontman of revolutionary Oakland hip-hop group The Coup has spent his entire career interrogating capitalism, white supremacy, and economic exploitation through art that refuses to compromise its vision or dilute its message.
Sorry to Bother You (2018) became an instant cult classic precisely because it dared to go places mainstream cinema wouldn't—depicting telemarketing as a soul-crushing extension of capitalist dehumanization, then escalating into science fiction territory with "Equisapiens" (human-horse hybrids) as the ultimate symbol of capitalist exploitation.
Riley's Revolutionary Resume
Boots Riley identifies as a communist and comes from militant political roots—his parents had ties to the Black Panthers. Before filmmaking, he fronted The Coup, the Oakland hip-hop group known for politically charged albums like Genocide & Juice and Pick a Bigger Weapon. The title I Love Boosters shares its name with a Coup song, continuing Riley's practice of blurring the lines between his musical and cinematic work.
After Sorry to Bother You, Riley created I'm a Virgo (2023) for Amazon Prime Video—a surreal coming-of-age series about a 13-foot-tall Black teenager navigating Oakland. The show earned critical acclaim for its imaginative storytelling and continued Riley's examination of how capitalism and white supremacy shape Black life in America.
Now, with I Love Boosters, Riley appears to be interrogating the fashion industry's systematic theft of Black culture, style, and innovation. The premise asks a provocative question: If luxury brands have been stealing from Black communities for decades, profiting from our aesthetics while excluding us from wealth and ownership, is stealing back really theft?
A Cast Built for Chaos
The trailer showcases an absolutely stacked ensemble that rivals any major studio production:
THE VELVET GANG & CO-STARS
Keke Palmer as Corvette (Lead)
Naomi Ackie — Velvet Gang member
Taylour Paige — Velvet Gang member
Eiza González — Velvet Gang member
Poppy Liu — Velvet Gang member
Demi Moore as Christie Smith, Fashion CEO
LaKeith Stanfield — Supporting role
Will Poulter — Supporting role
Don Cheadle — Supporting role
Palmer, fresh off acclaimed performances in Nope (2022) and Hustlers (2019), brings star power and dramatic range to Corvette. Ackie—who portrayed Whitney Houston in I Wanna Dance with Somebody and recently appeared in Blink Twice and Mickey 17—continues to prove herself one of the most versatile actors of her generation.
The reunion with LaKeith Stanfield, who starred in Sorry to Bother You, adds resonance for fans of Riley's earlier work. And Moore, riding high on her Golden Globe-nominated turn in The Substance, appears to be embracing a deliciously villainous role as fashion mogul Christie Smith.
The trailer hints that Cheadle's appearance might be one of those must-be-seen-to-be-believed Riley moments that becomes instantly iconic—though details remain under wraps.
The Bay Area Returns
Like all of Riley's work, I Love Boosters is deeply rooted in the Bay Area. The trailer prominently features Oakland landmarks—the Bay Bridge, storefronts on International Boulevard near 35th and 45th, including Friends Market and Santa Clara Appliances. This geographic specificity matters in Riley's cinema; Oakland isn't just a backdrop but a character itself, representing a particular intersection of Black culture, working-class struggle, and resistance to gentrification and displacement.
Principal photography wrapped in November 2024 in Atlanta (where many productions now shoot for tax incentives), but Riley's commitment to Bay Area representation remains central to the film's identity.
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Visual Style: "Fashionable" and Bold
The teaser delivers Riley's signature hyper-saturated color palette—that mustard yellow room from the first-look image appears in all its surreal glory, with the Velvet Gang dressed in matching yellow uniforms and nametags, staring off with expressions of bemused confusion. It's vintage Riley: taking the mundane (retail workers) and making it visually arresting and conceptually loaded.
Industry trade publications have described the film's aesthetic as "fashionable" and bold—and the trailer confirms this. There's a deliberate play with high fashion codes, designer aesthetics, and the kind of bold visual choices that make Riley's work instantly recognizable. Every frame feels designed not just for narrative purpose but as visual commentary on consumption, desire, and class.
"Boots has created another wildly original and boundary-pushing vision that's deliciously unpredictable... razor-sharp social commentary meets fearless, surreal storytelling and eye-popping imagery."
— Claudette Godfrey, SXSW VP of Film and TV
SXSW to Theaters
The May 22 release date positions I Love Boosters for a major theatrical run following its SXSW premiere. Riley's return to SXSW feels poetic—it's where Sorry to Bother You premiered in 2018, becoming the festival's breakout hit and launching Riley's film career.
SXSW VP of Film and TV Claudette Godfrey praised the new film: "Boots has created another wildly original and boundary-pushing vision that's deliciously unpredictable. We can't wait for our audience to be sucked into his singular, subversive world where razor-sharp social commentary meets fearless, surreal storytelling and eye-popping imagery—all powered by a ridiculously stacked cast of some of the most talented actors on the planet."
MARK YOUR CALENDAR
March 12, 2026
World Premiere at SXSW Film & TV Festival
May 22, 2026
Theatrical Release (Neon)
Riley's Creative Philosophy
In a 2024 interview with The Believer, Riley articulated his approach to filmmaking: "I'm trying to create a roller coaster ride. That's one place where I disagree with Martin Scorsese's critique of Marvel movies. He said, 'Oh, they're just like amusement parks.' Well, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think you can do that in a good way or in a bad way. I'm trying to take people through this ride, and I'm breaking rules as a way to catch people off guard."
This philosophy permeates the I Love Boosters trailer. Riley creates entertainment that refuses to separate pleasure from politics, spectacle from substance. His films are fun, wildly imaginative, visually stunning—and uncompromisingly radical in their critique of systemic oppression.
Why This Matters Now
Riley's return feels especially significant in 2026's cultural landscape. At a moment when discussions about cultural appropriation, economic inequality, and the fashion industry's exploitation of marginalized communities are increasingly mainstream, I Love Boosters arrives to complicate and challenge easy answers.
The film appears to ask: What does redistribution look like in a system designed to concentrate wealth? If the fashion industry has built billion-dollar empires by mining Black aesthetics without compensation or credit, what forms of resistance are justified? And how do we think about property, ownership, and theft in a society where the greatest thefts have been legal and celebrated?
These aren't abstract questions for Riley. As someone who identifies as a communist and comes from a family with Black Panther ties, his work has always centered the material conditions of working-class Black life under racial capitalism. I Love Boosters seems poised to interrogate the fashion industry as a specific site of this exploitation—where Black culture is consumed, repackaged, and sold back to us at prices we can't afford, by companies that exclude us from executive suites and ownership stakes.
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The Verdict
Based on this first teaser, I Love Boosters looks like exactly what we need from Boots Riley: a film that's simultaneously a blast to watch and deadly serious in its political critique. The kind of cinema that entertains while making you think, that makes you laugh while challenging you to question systems we've been taught to accept as natural and inevitable.
Riley has proven himself a singular voice in American cinema—a filmmaker who refuses to separate art from politics, who understands that radical ideas don't require boring presentation, and who trusts audiences to engage with complex themes without dumbing them down.
As Riley himself encouraged fans on social media following the trailer drop: spread this far and wide. In a landscape dominated by franchise filmmaking and risk-averse storytelling, I Love Boosters represents the kind of original, politically engaged cinema that deserves to be seen, discussed, and celebrated.
PRODUCTION DETAILS
Written & Directed by: Boots Riley
Cinematography: Natasha Braier
Produced by: Aaron Ryder, Andrew Swett
Production Companies: Neon, Ryder Picture Company, Savage Rose Films
Distribution: Neon (North America), Focus Features/Universal (International)
Runtime: 105 minutes