If you are one those persons who don’t or no longer have faith in Nollywood, this is the best time to rethink your position. And no, I’m not referring to the numerous quality cinematic offerings we have been getting for almost half a decade now. Those ones count, but there is something more convincing right now.
Have you heard about the adaptation of Roy Okupe’s epic fantasy graphic novel into an animated series? Malika: Warrior Queen is a project so exciting and new in the Nigerian filmmaking industry, it is hard to hold our collective breaths. It is an adaptation. The original material is a graphic novel. It is an animation. It is a series. Genre is epic fantasy!
Malika: Warrior Queen is a historical epic fantasy set in a breathtaking, 15-century West Africa where swords and spears are swung and wielded with grand expertise, where the realm of leadership and war is not solely reserved for, well, men. It is written by Roy Okupe, who is also the founder and Creative Director of YouNeek Studios.
YouNeek Studios is a company dedicated to telling extraordinary stories about extraordinary characters inspired African history and culture using comics, animation, videos games and other forms of media. They are already on the path to creating an entire comic universe of African superheroes and are responsible for such characters as EXO, Windmaker, Fury, Oniku, Twoshots, DREDs, and Malika.
Malika‘s cast line-up is equally worth our utmost anticipation with Nollywood actors in the likes of Adesua Etomi-Wellington, Femi Branch, Deyemi Okanlawon, Sambasa Nzeribe, Blossom Chukwujekwu, and many others. The recently released trailer is all you need to see to believe in this project.
We are excited that in the quest to inspire and nurture Africa’s coming generations through storytelling and comic characters, we’ll have an abundance of local content to turn to. This new collaboration between Nigeria’s growing animation industry and Nollywood is a heartily welcome development.
Malika is scheduled to screen at the 8th annual Lagos Comic Convention on September 21st and at the 6th annual MECCAcon Detroit, USA on the same date.
Watch the official trailer here.
