A Bob Marley movie focusing on his relationship with American impresario Danny Sims and singer Johnny Nash is to be funded by the Antiguan government.
Rebels is the title of the film which will be produced by Golden Island Filmworks, an independent company recently formed by St Kitts-born producer Rudy Langlais.
Langlais’ credits include movies like The Hurricane (starring Denzel Washington) and Sugar Hill which had Wesley Snipes in the lead role.
His main partners in the venture are entrepreneur Valmiki Kempadoo, producer Don Allan and veteran film executive Neil Sacker.
The terms of their deal with the Antiguan government sees the latter investing US$125 million in five feature films to be shot on the island.
Each film will have budgets ranging from US$20 million to US$80 million. The agreement was announced at the recent Toronto International Film Festival.
“My partners and I had a dream more than 10 years ago, that the Caribbean, which has produced brilliant statesmen like Alexander Hamilton, Nobel Prize-winning poets and novelists, Walcott and Naipaul, legendary athletes like Sobers and Richards and Bolt, and perhaps the world’s greatest cultural icon in Bob Marley, should add its ‘voice’ now to filmmaking,” said Langlais. “We have wanted to join our colleagues around the world to share our stories and join in telling stories together. Now that time is here. Exciting films will come of this collaboration.”
No production schedule has been disclosed for the films.
Rebels will look at how Marley’s career was enhanced by his time with the Mississippi-born Sims and Nash, a Texan, whom he met in Kingston during the late 1960’s.
Marley wrote several songs for Nash including the hit Stir it Up. He and The Wailers (which included Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston) did a number of recordings for JAD, a company owned by Sims and Nash.
Marley died in May 1981 at age 36. Sims, who was the singer/songwriter’s manager on his last tour in 1980, died at 75 in 2012.
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