Well, this sounds awesome: Viola Davis and Lupita Nyong’o are teaming up for a film about African female warriors. The Oscar winners will star in “The Woman King,” a story inspired by true events. A press release announcing the project revealed that TriStar Pictures has acquired worldwide rights to the pic.
Based on an original story by “Lights Out” actress Maria Bello, “The Woman King” is set in The Kingdom of Dahomey, “one of the most powerful states of Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries,” the press release details. The film centers on “Nanisca (Davis), General of the all-female military unit known as the Amazons, and her daughter Nawi (Nyong’o), who together fought the French and neighboring tribes who violated their honor, enslaved their people, and threatened to destroy everything they’ve lived for.”
Cathy Schulman’s Welle Entertainment is producing alongside Davis and Julius Tennon of JuVee Productions and Bello of Jack Blue Productions.
“‘The Woman King’ is the powerful true story of an extraordinary mother-daughter relationship,” said Hannah Minghella, President of TriStar Pictures. “And there’s no one more extraordinary than Viola Davis and Lupita Nyong’o to bring them to life.”
Schulman added “‘Black Panther’ just showed us how the power of imagination and lore could reveal a world without gender and racial stereotypes. ‘The Woman King’ will tell one of history’s greatest forgotten stories from the real world in which we live, where an army of African warrior women staved off slavery, colonialism, and inter-tribal warfare to unify a nation.”
If you’re thinking that this sounds like a glorious cross-over between “Black Panther” and “Wonder Woman,” you’re not alone. And the phenomenal success of both films likely had an impact on getting this project off the ground. “Black Panther’s” already taken in over $763 million worldwide and “Wonder Woman” grossed over $821 million across the globe, proving — yet again — that female-led stories and inclusive casts aren’t box office anathema.
No word on who will direct “The Woman King.”
Davis recently spoke out about receiving fewer opportunities and worse compensation as a woman of color. “We won’t talk about gender inequality of pay. Because a lot of the women who’ve stepped forward — and I stand in solidarity with them, okay? — what they are getting paid, which is half of what a man is getting paid … well, we get probably a tenth of what of what a Caucasian woman gets,” the “How to Get Away with Murder” star observed. “And I’m number one on the call sheet. And then I go in, and I have to hustle for my worth.”
Last year Davis took home an Academy Award for her supporting role in “Fences.” Her upcoming projects include “Widows,” a heist thriller penned by “Gone Girl” screenwriter and novelist Gillian Flynn, and “Small Great Things,” a drama about black nurse’s legal battle with a white supremacist couple co-starring Julia Roberts.
It was just announced that Nyong’o and her “Black Panther” co-star Danai Gurira are bringing Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s acclaimed novel “Americanah” to the small screen as a miniseries. The drama centers on a woman who grows up in Nigeria, travels to the United States to attend college, builds her writing career, and returns home as an adult.
Nyong’o won an Oscar in 2014 for her supporting role in “12 Years a Slave.”
