Nigerian Author Uzodinma Iweala's Novel Becomes Netflix's First Film for Cinemas

Nigerian Author Uzodinma Iweala's Novel Becomes Netflix's First Film for Cinemas

 Nigerian Author Uzodinma Iweala's multiple award winning 2005 novel Beasts of No Nation has become Netflix's first film for cinemas. The film adaptation and screenplay of the gripping war drama was done by Cary Fukunaga who is also the director of the thriller. Netflix bought the worldwide distribution rights for about $12 million and will be released simultaneously in cinemas and online through its subscription video on demand service on October 16, 2015. Bleecker Street will handle the theatrical release of the film.

The title of "Beasts of No Nation" came from the 1989 album of the same name by the Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti, who passed away on August 2, 1997.

The novel won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the Academy of Arts and Letters, the New York Public Library Young Lions 2006 Fiction Award, and the 2006 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. In 2007, Iweala was selected as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists. A graduate of Harvard University and the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, he lives in New York City and Lagos, Nigeria.

The leading actors include Idris Elba playing the war lord "Commandant", Abraham Attah as "Agu", Ama K. Abebrese as "Mother", Richard Pepple as "Father Friday" and Opeyemi Fagbohungbe as "Sergeant Gaz". It was screened in the main competition section of the 72nd Venice International Film Festival and it has been selected to be shown in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. "Beasts of No Nation" is projected to be a box office hit to further boost the American film industry following one of the best summers ever at the domestic box office.

Ticket sales at North American cinemas rose an estimated 10.4 percent, to $4.48 billion, for the period between the first weekend in May and Labor Day, from the same period a year earlier, the analytics firm Rentrak said on Sunday. Hollywood’s summer, which was one week longer this year because of a calendar quirk, has historically accounted for up to 40 percent of annual domestic ticket sales.~ The New York Times. 

 

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