I was not ready. I thought I was. I have been following this film since the announcement, read every article, watched every piece of content that has come out, and I still was not ready for what happened in that room at MVAAFF on August 7.
The evening started with an exclusive behind-the-scenes video and the trailer, both of which felt like versions that went a little deeper than what has been publicly available. More raw. More inside the world. Then Sunny Hostin came out and set the stage beautifully before Gina Prince-Bythewood and Thuso Mbedu took their seats. What followed was one of those conversations where you are sitting there taking mental notes because every few minutes somebody drops a gem and you do not want to forget it.
Let me tell you everything.
It Started With Tems
Prince-Bythewood revealed something during the conversation that stopped the room. Tems’ song “Try Me” was one of the cornerstones she wrote the entire film to. Not just listened to. Wrote the whole film to. Alongside music by Burna Boy and a broader Afrobeats playlist that shaped the entire sonic identity of Orïsha. So when it came time to build the soundtrack, reaching out to Tems was not a business decision. It was a creative inevitability.
She had her music supervisor reach out before the film even had a green light. Tems said yes immediately. And not just as a contributing artist. Tems came aboard as executive producer of the soundtrack, making history in the process. “She’s the first woman to executive produce a soundtrack at this level, a studio film,” Prince-Bythewood said. Let that land for a second. It is 2026. Burna Boy joined as executive music consultant.
The resulting soundtrack features three original songs from Tems, two from Burna Boy and contributions from Iron Air Force, Cold AF, Fireboy and others. “No skips,” Prince-Bythewood said. “Beautiful tracks, and songs that speak to the moments.” Based on what I heard in that room, I believe her completely.
Bringing Tomi’s World to Life
One thing you can absolutely credit Gina Prince-Bythewood for is knowing how to put the right people together to get the best results. She gave flowers to so many people throughout the conversation, from her department heads to her cast, and it was clear that this was not just a director talking about her team. It was a filmmaker describing a family that built something together.
When Prince-Bythewood talks about bringing Orïsha to life, she is clear that everything started with Tomi Adeyemi’s pages. “Everything was in those pages,” she said. Her job was not to invent the world but to honor it, to ask the right questions and find the right people to translate what Adeyemi created on the page into something audiences could see, feel and live inside.
Those questions were not small ones. What does magic look like when it comes from Black skin? What do the buildings look like when you draw from the actual history of great African palaces in Ethiopia instead of defaulting to Rome and Greece? What does Orïsha sound like, and I mean literally, what dialect do these people speak?
She and production designer Hannah Beachler, Oscar winner for Black Panther, found answers to all of it. They filmed in South Africa and discovered locations that looked almost too beautiful to be real, including a pink lake that appears in the film with zero CGI. No CGI. They found it. It exists.
The film’s visual effects team also discovered scientific research suggesting that melanin generates a kind of light unique to Black skin. Prince-Bythewood took that and made it the foundation for how magic works in this world, marrying it with the tradition of scarification to create a visual language for power that feels both ancient and true to the source material.
Costume designer Charlese Antoinette Jones, who is also a Mauritian priestess, brought her knowledge of color and the gods to every garment. Hair department head Andrea Mona Bowman spent months in testing just to get Zélie’s hair right. And the entire cast sat in dialect sessions together to build the sound of Orïsha because, as Mbedu put it, “It’s a magical world. Why do they sound like us? How do they differ from the royal side?” They created the language of this world the same way they approached everything else. With deep intention.
Thuso Mbedu Did Not Play About This Role
I already respected Thuso Mbedu. After this conversation I am in full awe. And what I want to be clear about is that the preparation she described was not just about personal drive. It was about the standard that Gina sets. This is a director who knows how to create an environment where people want to be their absolute best and then rise to meet it. Thuso did not just work hard because she wanted to. She worked hard because Gina built a world that demanded it and made you want to give everything you had.
Training started in the fall of 2024, months before they even got to set. The stunt coordinator was sending her drills for the staff, Zélie’s weapon, while she was still traveling internationally for other projects. She had a fake staff with her in Paris. She had it in Shanghai. She pushed for a fourth hour of training when the schedule only called for three.
“I have to feel like I’m going to fail at something to really push myself beyond the limit,” she said.
And it shows. Prince-Bythewood told the room that Mbedu would take a hit on set and not say anything until after the take was done. “She will come back and tell me she got hit in the face. And I’m like, why didn’t you tell me?” Prince-Bythewood said, laughing. “But it’s not going to stop her. I’m kind of proud.”
“When you train like a warrior, it changes you,” Prince-Bythewood added. “They didn’t have to act it because they lived it.”
The Cast That Showed Up
One of the things Prince-Bythewood said that hit hardest was about the moment she knew she had something special. She sent the script to established stars and asked them to play supporting roles. They said yes. Immediately.
“People are coming because they want to do something different. They want to have the opportunity to work with each other. It’s so rare that most of the time they’re the only one. And so here they get to be with each other,” she said.
She talked about sitting across from Idris Elba for the first time and just knowing. She talked about seeing Tosin Cole in a pilot fifteen years ago, never forgetting him, and finally getting to make that call. She talked about Amandla Stenberg grabbing the role of Amari and making it entirely her own. And Mbedu spoke about a cast and crew that came from Nigeria, from South Africa, from across the diaspora, creating a camaraderie that was not engineered or forced.
The Clips
This is where the evening shifted into something else entirely.
They showed us a device sequence that gave a window into just how deeply Thuso trained for this role. Seeing it on screen made everything she described make complete sense. This is not choreography. This is conviction. Then we got to see two sides of the story, Thuso as Zélie and Damson Idris as Inan, giving us just enough to understand the tension between them without giving the story away. The balance was perfect. There was one moment in the fight sequence where the entire crowd gasped. Not politely. Actually gasped. The kind of reaction that happens when something catches you completely off guard and your body responds before your brain does.
And the throne room scene. The colors. The architecture. The scale. The costumes. The sheer ambition of what has been translated from Adeyemi’s pages to the screen. The room went quiet in the best possible way.
They gave us enough to be completely invested and not nearly enough to spoil anything. That is a hard balance to strike and they struck it perfectly.
See This Movie
At the end of the conversation, someone asked how we can support the film. Prince-Bythewood was intentional in how she answered. She was not forceful about it. She simply said that this is an experience, and that experiences like this deserve to be seen together, in a room, on the biggest screen possible. She wants this film to be a shared moment. And sitting in that room at MVAAFF, feeling the energy of an audience encountering it for the first time, I understood exactly what she meant.
Children of Blood and Bone is not just a movie. It is an event. A fantasy world rooted in African culture and mythology, adapted with this level of intention, this level of craft, this level of Black excellence both in front of and behind the camera, at this scale, from a studio, directed by a Black woman, sourced from a novel written by a Black woman. That combination has not happened before. Not like this. And it deserves every seat filled on January 15.
The cast includes Thuso Mbedu as Zélie, Damson Idris as Inan, Amandla Stenberg as Amari, Tosin Cole as Tzain, Viola Davis as Mama Agba, Regina King as Queen Nehanda, Cynthia Erivo as Admiral Kaea, Idris Elba as Lekan, Lashana Lynch as Jumoke, Chiwetel Ejiofor as King Saran, Saniyya Sidney, Zackary Momoh, Bukky Bakray, Ayra Starr and more.
Children of Blood and Bone opens exclusively in theaters, IMAX, Dolby Cinema and Premium Large Format theaters on January 15, 2027.