Mandela’s life story to be turned into miniseries

JOHANNESBURG: Anti- apartheid icon Nelson Mandela’s life story will be turned into a six- part television miniseries co-created by his grandson, the producers behind the multinational project said on Monday.

Titled Madiba— Mandela’s clan name—the series “will take a broad view of the inner passions and outside forces that guided him,” they said in a statement.

With a budget of $30 million, the project will explore Mandela’s relationship with his mother, his political activism, imprisonment, rise as political leader and election as South Africa’s first black president.

The producers will announce who will play the democracy icon once casting finishes in the next few weeks, said Lance Samuels, whose South African production house Out of Africa will co-produce the series with Kweku Mandela, a grandson of the apartheid hero.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation said that it supported the undertaking and was helping with research.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner was imprisoned for 27 years for his fight against white oppression in South Africa. He was freed in 1990 and elected president four years later.

Kweku Mandela said that it would seek to portray “Mandela the man” instead of “Mandela the saint.”

Out of Africa, Canada’s Blue Ice Films and Britain’s Left Bank Pictures will film mainly on- site in South Africa.

“We will start filming in August and plan to release by 2013,” Samuels told Agence France-presse.

“We are just pretty much putting the script together and casting,” he said.

Main characters will be cast from London and Los Angeles, while South African actors would make up the supporting cast, Samuels added.

Emmy- winning writer Nigel Williams, who received acclaim for the miniseries Elizabeth I, is penning the six one-hour television episodes.

The screenplay will be based on two Mandela books— his autobiographical Conversations with Myself and a book of authoriszd quotations, titled Nelson Mandela by Himself.

“All movies about Mandela only pinpointed one period in his life. A six-hour miniseries can cover his life from when he was a little boy until he became president,” Samuels told Agence France-presse.

“A feature films does not have the time to do that,” he said.