Warner Bros. Secures Black Samurai from The Color Purple Director Blitz Bazawule

Warner Bros. just snagged the next big thing from none other than The Color Purple director himself, Blitz Bazawule. It’s an epic tale of Yasuke, the legendary African warrior who went and became the very first Black samurai.

They’re calling it Black Samurai, naturally. Bazawule, he’s not just directing, he wrote that bad boy on pure instinct, and he’s producing it under his own banner, Inward Gaze. Warner Bros. had to duke it out in a fierce bidding war against three other big shots to score this gem.

This won’t be your run-of-the-mill biopic. No sir! Bazawule’s gonna give us Yasuke like we’ve never seen him before. Think 300 meets Mad Max kinda vibe. Yeah, wrap your heads around that!

Now, he isn’t spilling all the beans just yet, keeping those plot details under lock and key. But we’re in for one hell of a ride through the Sengoku period in Japan.

Oh, and get this, before he landed at Warner Bros., their big cheese, Michael De Luca, was set to bring Yasuke to life with none other than Chadwick Boseman. MGM had their own Yasuke gig in the pipeline back in 2019.

And if that isn’t enough to get your heart racing, Bazawule’s got more up his sleeve. He’s cooking up a limited series for FX based on his own novel, The Scent of Burnt Flowers, with none other than Yahya Abdul-Mateen II leading the charge.

Now, if you’ve been living under a rock, let me catch you up. Bazawule made waves back in 2018 with his debut flick The Burial of Koj. Then, he sprinkled his magic on projects like Ava DuVernay’s Cherish the Day and Beyoncé’s Black Is King. But, he really hit the big time with The Color Purple in 2023.