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TWENTY POUNDS FILMS:
New Company to Produce From the Belly of the Gods
Obiageli Adiasor
africanwriters@gmail.com
Thursday, May 8, 2008
ABUJA, NIGERIA: In
September of 2007, Mr. Victor Amadi, an Abuja-based
media consultant released a press briefing about
plans to make a movie based on the book
From
the Belly of the Gods
(see
kwenu.com).
Authored by Dr. Ugorji Okechukwu Ugorji and
published by the Princeton, New Jersey-based Sungai
Books in 1993, the story is a work of mythology that
presents an African myth of creation, with the
modern Santa Clause (or Father Christmas) legend as
a character and hook. The screenplay for the film
has just been completed by Ugorji and Tai Emeka
Obasi, with a contemporary US immigrant plot added
to the original story.
The
buzz now in the Nigerian movie industry is that the
epic movie designed to use Hollywood and Nollywood
actors and crew, will be produced by a new motion
pictures company known as Twenty Pounds Films.
The production effort in Nigeria will be anchored by
Cajethan Ugwuegbu, a Nollywood veteran producer,
with whom Twenty Pounds Films has signed a
contract. Ugwuegbu’s film credits as a producer
include Bumper to Bumper, Apostate of Hell,
Common Sense, The Journalist, Trinity, Foreign
Affairs, 11 Days 11 Nights, The Revelation, Breaking
News, Lovers’ Creek, Fools in Love, The Ambassadors,
and Warriors of Satan. Ugwuegbu will be
backed by Bekke Adeoye and Lizzy Agbugba as
associate producers at the Nigerian end.
Billed by the producers as a Trans-Atlantic
collaborative effort, the movie is being directed by
a team led by Andy Amenechi, a celebrated veteran
director of Nigerian epic-like movies. His movie
credits include A cry for help, Butterfly,
Treasure, Legacy, Break Up, and Mortal
Inheritance to mention only a few. Amenechi,
whose most recent film work The Concubine,
based on Elechi Amadi’s book of the same title, is
about to be release, will be supported by the
American director Reuben Rodriquez who has directed
movies for Iron Horse Films.
The
role of the lead female character in the movie,
Nneka, has been written and expanded with Nollywood
star Genevieve Nnaji in mind. According to the
producer Ugwuegbu, the veteran actor considered the
most influential and most prominent female actor in
the Nigerian movie industry, will be challenged by a
role that not only showcases her youthful beauty but
also her versatility, as she plays a much older
woman when Nneka ages in the movie. The role of
Nneka’s husband, Obi, will be played by another
veteran Nollywood actor Kanayo O. Kanayo. Obi and
Nneka are the parents (in ancient times) of Chima,
who is a central figure in the trans-racial
mythology of creation and evolution that promises to
break new grounds in Nigerian and American movie
making.
Britain-based Nigerian actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, who
has appeared in several Hollywood blockbuster movies
recently and Oscar-winning American actor Cuba
Gooden, Jr. are being approached to play the lead
male character in the movie, a fictional Nigerian
Army COL. UZOMA. The Colonel, who had a stint as the
Defense Attache at the Nigerian Embassy in
Washington, DC and later served as an instructor at
the War College in Abuja, is also the narrative
voice of the movie.
According to the screenplay, the first scene of the
movie, an African child-naming ceremony in the US,
would be shot in New Jersey, with over 200 prominent
members of the Nigerian Diaspora community as
extras. Another scene, involving an interview with
Professor Molefi Kete Asante of Temple University,
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, will also be shot in
the US. A thanksgiving mass scene, a bank scene, and
a Father Christmas scene will be shot in Abuja,
while most of the epic aspects of the story will be
shot in Imo State and Cross River State. According
to Dr. Kemnagum Okorie, a founder and first
Secretary General of the US-based World Igbo
Congress, who is one of two legal consultants to the
movie project, “this one challenges virtually
everything we know and believe.” Okorie says further
that “It is ambitious; but it is the kind of work
that would influence generations to come.”
Visit
Talldrums.com for more information as the production
unfolds.
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