John Boyega Partners With Netflix To Produce African Films 

John Boyega is partnering with Netflix through his UpperRoom Productions company to develop non-English language films centred on West and East Africa.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, it appears the actor’s production company, UpperRoom Productions, is teaming up with Netflix to produce a slew of African films.

Apparently, UpperRoom now has a focus on West and East Africa. West Africa reflects Boyega’s Nigerian heritage and East Africa reflects the Sudanese heritage of Yara Shaikh, who is UpperRoom’s VP of Productions.

Netflix’s first African movie, Queen Sono, just came out last month, and it clearly has big plans for its expansion into the continent if it’s having a production company specifically focus on it and using a famous guy from Star Wars.

Boyega, whose family is from Nigeria, said in a statement that he’s “thrilled” to be working with Netflix on this, especially with the idea of making non-English films that adapt African stories and “original material.” We don’t know much else about what Boyega is planning or if he’ll have any more active involvement in these projects, but he did found UpperRoom in 2016 so he could serve as a producer on Pacific Rim: Uprising, so in that one example he did also star in the thing he’s producing.

“The streamer, which debuted its first African Original Queen Sono last month, has signed a development deal with Boyega’s U.K.-based UpperRoom Productions, with a specific focus on non-English language films from West and East Africa,” THR writes. “Three features are included in the multiyear deal, two from Nigeria and one from Egypt, with UpperRoom developing projects based on African IP such as literary properties, Nollywood classics, screenplays, and mythology.” You can check out the full article in the tweet below:

I am thrilled to announce that my production company, UpperRoom Productions, will be partnering with Netflix International, to develop a slate of non English feature films. https://t.co/n0xUlLqRaO

— John Boyega (@JohnBoyega) March 10, 2020

Photo credit: John Boyega | Lia Toby/Getty Images