Warner Bros. and Blitz Bazawule, the filmmaker of The Color Purple, have partnered. Bazawule will direct the film Black Samurai, which Warner Bros. has acquired the rights to. He will also produce the picture under his Inward Gaze banner, having written it on spec. The narrative will center on Yasuke, an African warrior who fought for Japanese daimyo Oda Nobunaga in the Sengoku period of samurai warfare in the sixteenth century in Japan. Deadline claims that four studios were considering the idea, but Warners finally made the greatest offer. Warners and the project started when he worked on the current musical rendition of The Color Purple.
Although there have been a number of Yasuke projects in the past, sources claim that the filmmaker's initial strategy is being likened to ground-breaking movies like Mad Max and 300 (the precise strategy is still unknown).
In addition to The Color Purple, Bazawule is working on a limited series for FX adapted from his first book, The Scent of Burnt Flowers, which Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is set to executive produce and star in. Granderson Des Rochers' André Des Rochers and Anita Surendran, as well as CAA and M88, represent him.
