For anyone who has wondered what happened to Nigerian filmmaker CJ Obasi’s Ojuju series, which has been anticipated for a few years, the filmmaker himself has revealed its fate. An American media merger led to its demise.
In a post shared by Obasi on social media on November 4, he says the series’ fate was sealed by the Warner Media and Discovery merger, which took place in 2022. The film upon which the series was to be based on had attracted attention internationally, leading to interest from the former Warner Media.
That interest led to talks with Obasi and the idea for a series was born. According to Obasi, the series already had a script for its first episode before one of America’s big media mergers killed off the plans.
What happened to Ojuju series?
“This time 10 years ago, my debut feature OJUJU premiered at Africa International Film Festival – AFRIFF in Tinapa, Calabar, where it won the Best Nigerian Film Prize,” Obasi wrote.
“OJUJU would go on to win several more awards, garnering critical acclaim from the likes of The Hollywood Reporter, ScreenAnarchy, Bloody Disgusting and many more and since screened in at least 50 film festivals. More recently it was included in IndieWire’s List of Greatest Zombie Films of All Time.”
He continued: “This zero budget film we made was eventually acquired by former WarnerMedia for a HBOMax Original Series adaptation, with Blumhouse attached, and a green-lit pilot script written by me before the WarnerMedia + Discovery merger happened, and HBO Max was no more.“
Indeed, a year after the merger, HBO Max became Max. Already several projects had been cancelled, with one of the more high-profile cancellations being an already shot Batgirl movie. Obasi’s statement makes it clear that his project was also one of the victims of that merger.
Since then, however, Obasi has gone on to succeed internationally with Mami Wata, a film set in a fictional West African village which premiered at Sundance and took home a prize.
Still, the filmmaker has not given up yet on the story that started his filmmaking story. On the same post on social media, he said, “The world of OJUJU is so huge, and will return in a gloriously expansive way”.
