After helming last year’s musical adaptation of The Color Purple, director Blitz Bazawule is going to the 16th century for his next project. Bazawule is set to direct Black Samurai, a movie telling the story of African-born samurai Yasuke. Variety reports that Warner Bros. has acquired the film after a competitive bidding process, beating out three other studios. Bazawule wrote the script for the film on spec, and will also produce the film.
Black Samurai will be Bazawule‘s sophomore major-studio feature; prior to taking the reins of The Color Purple, he directed The Burial of Kojo in his native Ghana, and was among the contributors to Beyoncé‘s Black is King visual album. He is also working on a TV miniseries project, The Scent of Burnt Flowers, which is based on his debut novel and is set to star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Black Samurai is said not to be a traditional biopic, but to take artistic liberties akin to 300 and Mad Max. The project should not be confused with the Black Samurai pulp thriller novels by Marc Olden, which are set in the modern day and are being developed into a film by Netflix and director Chad Stahelski.
Who Was Yasuke?
Details on Yasuke‘s life, and even his original name, have been lost to the mists of history, and are known largely throigh the writings of Jesuit missionaries who encountered him. He was a man from Africa who came to Japan with a Jesuit missionary, Alessandro Valignano. Later, he became a retainer to the daimyō Oda Nobunaga during the Sengoku period (the same period as FX’s acclaimed miniseries Shogun), during which Nobunaga attempted to unite the warring regions of Japan into a single nation. Nobunaga gave him the name “Yasuke”, and he became a member of the daimyō’s court; the two were reportedly quite close, and Yosuke spoke Japanese well. In 1582, Nobunaga was betrayed and killed by a subordinate. Yasuke survived Nobunaga’s death, but what happened to him afterward remains a mystery.
Despite the limited historical records of his life, or perhaps because of them, Yasuke has become a popular character in historical fiction. Most prominently, the Netflix anime series Yasuke premiered on the streamer in 2021, with Lakeith Stanfield providing the voice for the title character; it presents a fantastical take on Yasuke‘s life after Nobunaga‘s death in 1582. A live-action film project was in the works several years ago; Chadwick Boseman was attached to star before the actor’s tragic death.
No release date has yet been set for Black Samurai. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
via Collider