Writer, director and producer John Singleton is dead at 51. The filmmaker suffered a stroke earlier this month and fell into a deep coma from which he never awoke.
Singleton died on Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles. The director’s family announced that they were taking John off of life support on Monday morning, following some premature reports of his death.
After just crossing the halfway years, John Singleton has died due to a stroke leaving behind a prominent legacy but a life cut too short.
“It is with heavy hearts we announce that our beloved son, father and friend, John Daniel Singleton will be taken off of life support today. This was an agonising decision, one that our family made, over a number of days, with the careful counsel of John’s doctors” the family said in a statement.
In 1992, Singleton, at 24 years old, became the youngest director and the first African American to earn a Best Director Oscar nomination for his debut movie Boyz N The Hood. It was a groundbreaking film that analysed the socio/political/economic status of African Americans living in squalor at the time.
The movie “opened doors in Hollywood, a world that was just a few miles away, yet worlds away, from the neighbourhood in which he grew up”.
His family continued the statement by saying “John was such a supernova in his youth that we forget that he was only beginning to fully assert his gifts as as director”.
There has been an enormous outpouring of support and admiration for Singleton since his hospitalisation in April 17, with everyone from Snoop Dogg to William Friedkin sharing their admiration and condolences for this incredible director. Our hearts go out to his family and friends.
