African-Based Video Game to Be Turned Into Hollywood Film

The first role-playing (RPG) video game developed in Africa is headed to Hollywood. American-based management-production company, Good Fear Film, has bought the rights of “Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan,” a 2D African fantasy action-RPG created by Cameroonian developer, Guillaume Madiba Olivier, who is the founder and CEO of Kiro’o Games.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the production company, which is run by producer Chris Bender and his business partner Jack Weiner, have picked up the rights to the game, which was released on Microsoft Windows via Steam earlier this year.

“This is an incredibly unique entry into the fantasy genre and we are as inspired by Madiba as we are in the world that he has created,” Bender and Weiner said in a joint statement.

“My team and I are very excited to see our game become a movie in Hollywood. It is something we’ve dreamed about since the beginning,” the 30-year-old Olivier noted.

Olivier designed the game in 2014 and the official trailer depicts the main character, Prince Enzo Kori-Odan, in an African environment as he fights to reclaim his fictional kingdom, Zama.

Through creative crowdfunding website, Kickstarter, Olivier was able to raise over $50,000 to create the game, he told CNN.

In an interview with OkayAfrica, the University of Yaounde graduate explained that Aurion was based on African issues, such as “the search for independence, colonization, and how the continent can be a global player today.”

His efforts paid off as Kiro’o Games was selected to be a part of the 2016 Mandela Washington Fellowship Program, launched by President Barack Obama in 2014.