Iwaju, meaning “The Future” in Yoruba, has been picked up by Walt Disney Animation Studios and will premiere on Disney+ steaming platform this 2022.
Iwaju will be the first co-production between Disney Animation and an outside studio. The founders of the African animation company Kugali, were on hand at the D23 Expo in Anaheim to show what’s in store.
Written and directed by Kugali co-founder Ziki Nelson, “Iwaju” is set in a futuristic version of Lagos, Nigeria and follows two kids, Tola and Kole, who grow up on opposite sides of a city sharply divided by the haves and have-nots. Their friendship is tested by Bode, a tech pioneer whose futuristic advances hide a criminal underworld he runs with an iron fist.
The series tackles social themes facing Lagos in real-life, most notably the widening inequality facing its residents.
The story caught the eyes of Jennifer Lee, Walt Disney Animation Studios’ chief creative officer which she said she came across on BBC when of one the co-founders “hoped to take on Disney.”
Kugali Media was created in 2017 by Tolu Olowofoyeku, Hamid Ibrahim and Fikayo Adeola all of whom were tired of non-African stories.
Iwaju started off as a comic book collection set in a futuristic Lagos, Nigeria, which Hamid Ibrahim the production designer has described as a “Kugali-Disney mash-up.”
Lee calls it “a true collaboration”, saying “This is not Disney pushing in some ways pushing our vision onto Kugali. It is a collaboration in that both companies are getting something out of it and supporting each other.”
She further says the collaboration with Kugali has “made us better storytellers at Disney by shaking up how we work, it’s making us move towards the future.”
The collaboration had been hush-hush while in its first stages.
