Renowned Illustrator Nicholle Kobi Teaming With Erik Barmack On Animated African Queens Series
Variety is reporting that renowned French African artist Nicholle Kobi is teaming with Erik Barmack, the former Netflix executive who oversaw its game-changing drive into production around the world, on “Queens,” a high-concept, stylish animated series about six extraordinary real-life African queens.
Set up at Barmack’s L.A.-based Wild Sheep Content, the high-concept “Queens” is an attempt to reclaim for Black people around the world a history and source of inspiration that has been denied them by mainstream media and public education.
The stories, one per episode, are being positioned as four-quadrant family-friendly entertainment with a target age group of 10 and up.
They will mesh real-life events ranging over thousands of years of history and authenticated by historians with a dash of magic and, as the series’ central visual look, Kobi’s character art.
“Queens” is the second show that teams Barmack and Kobi. Variety has also revealed the pair is in paid development on a series for ViacomCBS-owned BET. The series, “La Femme Noire,” is an animated “Sex and the City”-type romance series based on Kobi’s Instagram drawings, featuring Black women from around the world. The series is being written by Yvette Foy, whose credits include work on “First Wives Club,” a BET Plus series.
An animated anthology, “Queens” derives from a double sense of frustration, Kobi told Variety
“When I started putting my artwork on social media, it was because I didn’t see images of sophisticated Black women. It’s really about not going along with how the media — mostly the American media but sometimes Europe’s — see Black people.”
The series will tell six stories in six vastly different time periods from six different parts of Africa, differentiated by music, visual style and focus.
Amina de Zazzau by Erik Barmack
There’s love, for example, in the story of Queen Amanirenas of Kush, modern-day Sudan, who fell head over heels for Emperor Terigetas who became her soulmate. The essence of Black love and the true definition of a power couple, according to a synopsis, they ruled over Kush until Terigetas died in battle. Heartbroken, Amanirenas took up his warrior’s mantle, leading her troops into battle and — remarkably — rolling back Roman Emperor’s Caesar Augustus’ push south from Cleopatra’s Egypt into the rest of Africa.
Set in 18th century South Africa, “Nandi, Mother of King Chaka Zulu” centers on a mother protecting her young son, a future great Zulu king.
Other episodes feature 19th century Queen Mother Yaa Asantewaa, who battled colonialism; Queen Amina, in 16th century Nigeria, who created trade routes throughout Northern Africa; and Queen Makeba of Sheba, known as Queen of the South in the Song of Songs, who lived around 900 B.C. and told riddles to King Solomon.
“Queens” will likely use storyboard artists in France and then an animation studio in South Africa and employ both writers that have experience in the markets where the stories are based and U.S. writers who are experts in animation, Barmack said.