Gina Prince-Bythewood to direct *Children of Blood and Bone* film

Gina Prince-Bythewood has called Tomi Adeyemi a “genius” as she prepares to bring Adeyemi’s bestselling West African fantasy novel “Children of Blood and Bone” to the big screen. Speaking at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival on Wednesday night, the director shared early clips and praised the book’s worldbuilding as “unlike anything we’ve seen before.” Prince-Bythewood, known for “Love & Basketball” and “The Woman King,” said the film’s fantasy epic scale is rare in Hollywood, especially for stories centered on Black characters and cultures.

The project matters because Hollywood has long struggled to greenlight big-budget fantasy films centered on African stories and Black heroes. Adeyemi’s 2018 novel, set in a reimagined Orisha-inspired world where magic is real, became a global sensation and a New York Times bestseller. Its success proved there was demand for African fantasy, but translating that into a visual spectacle required a director willing to take on the challenge. Prince-Bythewood, who optioned the rights in 2018, has spoken about the pressure to do justice to Adeyemi’s vision while making it accessible to mainstream audiences.

At the festival, Prince-Bythewood and lead actor Thuso Mbedu screened a never-before-seen clip of the movie, which is currently in post-production. Prince-Bythewood described Adeyemi’s world as “so rich and so layered” that it demanded creative choices about how to bring magic, language, and culture to life on screen. Mbedu, who plays the rebellious protagonist Zélie Adebola, said the story resonated with her own South African upbringing. The film is expected to blend Yoruba, Igbo, and other West African cultural elements with high-fantasy action, a combination rarely attempted in mainstream cinema.

With production complete and a release date still unannounced, “Children of Blood and Bone” is poised to become a landmark in African fantasy filmmaking. If successful, it could open doors for more adaptations of African speculative fiction and signal to studios that globally diverse fantasy stories can draw massive audiences. Prince-Bythewood has already hinted that the film will stay true to Adeyemi’s vision while expanding it visually. The stakes are high—not just for the cast and crew, but for how Hollywood approaches representation in genre storytelling.