Why Are So Many New Movies Shouting Out Childish Gambino?

He didn’t even have to turn up to set for a cameo.

Next month, we’re gonna finally hear Donald Glover and Beyoncé serenading one another on the big screen. That they’ll be voicing amorous lions is irrelevant: it’s the movie/music event of the season.

However, Disney’s rival studios also want to bask in the reflected glory of Glover, who’s only major role in 2019 is as adult Simba in Disney's (little bit creepy) remake of The Lion King.

That hasn’t kept him from appearing in two other flicks—produced by Sony and Universal Pictures, respectively—whether he realises it or not. His unofficial cameos may not be enough to help the movies rake in as much money as The Lion King inevitably will, but they prove that Glover and his musical alter ego Childish Gambino is a multi-quadrant crossover star; an icon to be used as a loving punchline, equal to the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and a pre-cancelled Michael Jackson.

Hey, these aren’t my words; they’re almost literally the words of Men In Black: International and Yesterday.

*The  mildest of spoilers for Men in Black: International and Yesterday ahead.*

If you happened to see Sony’s Men in Black: International recently (and judging by the box office receipts, it’s likely you didn’t), you would have noticed Glover’s presence during Agent M’s (Tessa Thompson) induction at MIB’s New York headquarters. There, she gets to glimpse the big screen monitoring the most famous aliens hiding undercover on planet Earth. In the original Men in Black, Will Smith’s Agent J gawked at the screen as it revealed Danny DeVito was one such alien, while In Men in Black 2, actual Michael Jackson appeared as an extra-terrestrial (a scene that has aged terribly).

But back to International. This time, Agent M sees Ariana Grande and Elon Musk, followed by Donald Glover himself. His appearance even warrants a retort from M: "Now that makes sense."

I was surprised to see another fawning joke about Childish Gambino a few weeks later in Universal’s Yesterday, the pic in which a man discovers The Beatles have been inexplicably scrubbed from existence. Himesh Patel’s character Jack Malik spends a night frantically Googling other artists to see if they’re still around, beginning with The Rolling Stones, and moving onto, you guessed it, Gambino. You’ll be glad to know Donald Glover survived The Beatles’ erasure. So is Jack. In the scene, he literally praises the heavens for Glover’s existence.

If we look a little further back, there was one other unexpected Glover shout-out in late 2018, thanks to Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. You may have spied him on the television of Miles Morales’ uncle, Aaron Davis, who was apparently watching the episode of Community in which Glover’s character Troy wears Spider-Man pyjamas.

At least there’s a link here. That original shot in Community was a reference to Glover’s campaign to play Morales in a live-action Spider-Man feature. He would later appear as Davis in Spider-Man: Homecoming (though in the Spider-Verse, Davis’ voice came courtesy of Mahershala Ali).

With three sorta-cameos in just six months, you have to wonder where we’ll see references to Donald Glover next. Can they work him into Hobbs & Shaw? Is there room for "Redbone" on the soundtrack to Downton Abbey? Will Disney squeeze Simba into Frozen 2?

We've previously remarked how hard Glover’s Atlanta co-star Brian Tyree Henry is working to appear in all the movies. Poor guy. Without even trying, Glover’s about to overtake him.

Header Image: Universal / Sony / YouTube (Donald Glover)