Pan-African entertainment studio Kugali vowed to kick Disney’s butt — and Disney was into it
Update (Sep. 8, 2022): During the 2022 D23 expo, Disney revealed a first look image at Iwájú, showing off the two young protagonists and a futuristic-looking lizard creature, with flying drones around them. The show is set to premiere on Disney Plus sometime in 2023.
Journey into a futuristic version of Lagos, Nigeria with this FIRST LOOK of Disney Animation and Kugali’s Iwájú! The all-new Original series streams on <a href=«https://twitter.com/DisneyPlus?ref_src=» https:>@DisneyPlus
in 2023. <a href=«https://twitter.com/hashtag/D23Expo?src=hash&ref_src=» https:>#D23Expo pic.twitter.com/Y5rpL4i7mR
Last December, amidst the fanfare of five new Marvel series and nine new Star Wars shows, Disney announced a collaboration with Pan-African entertainment company Kugali to create an animated science-fiction series for Disney Plus. Set in a future Lagos, Nigeria, Iwájú would explore the ideas of class, innocence, and challenging the status quo.
At this year’s Annecy Festival, the creative leaders at Disney and Kugali came together to talk more about Iwájú and the collaboration between the two companies. Kugali was started by three friends in Nigeria as a podcast aimed at exploring African entertainment. But co-founder Ziki Nelson realized after two seasons of the show that he’d basically covered everything of interest in the African cultural landscape.
“We realized what the community needed wasn’t actually someone to talk about the content,” he explained. “They needed someone to actually create that content.”
It’s rare for Disney Animation to partner this way with another studio, considering how tight its in-house production has become over nearly a century.
“When I first came to Disney, everything was created in house,” said
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