Boots Riley turns class struggle into comedy with I Love Boosters

A striking development has emerged in artificial intelligence. Entertainment EntertainmentPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All Entertainment Report ReportPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All Report Film FilmPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

FollowSee All FilmBoots Riley turns class struggle into comedy with I Love Boosters“Power under capitalism comes from capital itself, and we need to figure out how to have collective control of that. ”by Charles Pulliam-Moore Charles Pulliam-MooreFilm & TV ReporterPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All by Charles Pulliam-MooreMay 22, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC Photo: Getty Charles Pulliam-Moore Charles Pulliam-MoorePosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

Technical Details

FollowSee All by Charles Pulliam-Moore is a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years. Before Boots Riley became the writer / director / musician behind Sorry to Bother You and I’m a Virgo, he was a young community organizer fighting for social justice as part of the Progressive Labor Party.

Riley has channeled his anti-establishment, pro-worker politics into every piece of art that he’s made. But his belief that our society is long overdue for a revolution is most clearly articulated in his latest feature, I Love Boosters. You can hear elements of I Love Boosters’ anti-capitalist message sprinkled throughout “I Love Boosters!

” — a 2006 song Riley wrote and produced for his hip-hop group, The Coup. The movie also looks and feels like it could be set in the same worlds as Riley’s previous visual projects, but when I spoke with him recently, he explained that he isn’t trying to build a shared universe. Though “each of these stories is guided by the same rules,” Riley wanted to set I Love Boosters apart by making it a comedy that explores the nuances of class struggle.

Industry Implications

“There have probably been 10,000 or more workplace comedies or just workplace movies where the manager is an asshole or somebody is doing something wrong,” Riley told me. “But few of them really center class struggle the way you see in Matewan, Norma Rae, and The Apartment. The script writers might not have been involved in class struggle, but it was happening in the world around them, and it takes a huge effort to edit that reality out.

”Set in a fantastical spin on the San Francisco Bay Area where skyscrapers lean at impossible angles and smooth-talking demons prowl the streets, I Love Boosters tells the story of a group of women who see shoplifting from luxury fashion retailers as a form of community service.

The development is set to intensify competition in the AI space, experts say.