Nigerian-American Director, Rick Famuyiwa In Talks To Helm ‘Son Of Shaolin’ Adaptation

Following the critical and commercial success of his coming-of-age dramedy, Dope, we were all pretty excited when Nigerian-American filmmaker, Rick Famuyiwa, was announced as the director of the DCEU’s solo Flash movie.

All our hopes for a solid DCEU movie (pre-Wonder Woman) were then dashed when it was announced that Famuyiwa had left the project due to “creative differences”.

A different comic book movie

Well, it looks like we might still get a chance to see the brilliant director helm a comic book movie after all. Variety reports that Famuyiwa is currently in negotiations with Sony Pictures to helm Son Of Shaolin – an adaptation of the yet-to-be published graphic novel.

Son Of Shaolin follows a black teenager from Harlem who realizes he’s the last living descendant of an ancient Shaolin warrior. He’s then forced to train with a mysterious Master as he awaits the deadly villain that has killed the rest of his ancestors.

The movie is set to be produced by Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s production company, Seven Bucks; with the graphic novel’s author, Jay Longino, who also wrote the first draft of the script set to executive produce.

While no casting news has been made yet, we are totally rooting for Shameik Moore – who played the geeky Malcolm Adekanbi in Famuyiwa’s Dope and the daredevil DJ, Shaolin Fantastic, in Netflix’s The Get Down – to land the lead role. 

Anyway, while we await more news on that, we can get hyped over the fact that Famuyiwa is currently working on a Showtime pilot written by Lena Waithe (the writer behind Master Of None’s tremendous ‘Thanksgiving’ episode).