The Color Purple director Blitz Bazawule’s next film will be Black Samurai, which Warner Bros. is backing. More on the film below.
CinemaCon is in full swing and our news desk has been busy penning story after story on the new exciting trailers and upcoming reboots and sequels. The latest exciting bit of news, albeit not directly from CinemaCon, involves Blitz Bazawule, the director behind The Color Purple.
As reported by Variety, Bazawule is working on a film about Yasuke, an African warrior who went on to become the very first Black Samurai.
The film is tentatively titled simply Black Samurai. Bazawule has already written the script and will be directing as well as producing. Warner Bros. beat out other studios and streamers in a bidding war. Warner Bros. also released Bazawule’s The Color Purple so there’s already an existing, and presumably good, relationship between the Ghanaian filmmaker and the studio.
Yasuke came to Japan in August 1579, during the Sengoku period, and stayed roughly three years. During those three years, he pledged allegiance to the daimyō Oda Nobugaka and was then given the name Yasuke.
Very few details are known about Yasuke aside from the three-year period he spent in Japan, so Bazawule will have to fill in some gaps. Variety mentions that the project isn’t your standard, run-of-the-mill biopic, but will instead include elements similar to films such as 300 and Mad Max.
Interestingly, before taking on a job as the CEO of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, Michael De Luca was attached to another adaptation of Yasuke’s story, reportedly starring Chadwick Boseman.
