Ace Nollywood actor Wale Ojo is set to play Africa’s foremost dramatist and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka in film adaptation, The Man Died. The film is inspired by Soyinka’s memoir of the same title and is dedicated to celebrating the icon’s 90th birthday.
Soyinka’s The Man Died is a memoir that accounts for the author’s arrest and his 22-month incarceration as a political prisoner during the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970). The book was published in 1972, two years after the war ended.
In 1986, Soyinka became the first sub-Saharan African to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature by the Swedish Academy. The literary icon won the prize as one “who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence.”
Wale Ojo had hailed the genius on his 89th birthday in June 2023, describing him as one who “earned his place amongst the G.O.A.T. of this universe!”
Nollywood veterans Chidi Mokeme, Sam Dede, Segilola Ogidan, Norbert Young, Edmund Enabe and Francis Onwochei will also star in the film adaptation alongside the lead actor. Other featured actors are Christiana Oshunniyi, Simileoluwa Hassan and Abraham Amkpa.
The film is written by Bode Asiyanbu, produced by Femi Odugbemi, and directed by Awam Amkpa. The Man Died is set for release on Soyinka’s 90th birthday in July 2024.
In 2022, EbonyLife released Elesin Oba, The King’s Horseman, a Netflix adaptation of Soyinka’s 1975 play, Death and the King’s Horseman, starring Odunlade Adekola, Deyemi Okanlawan, Omowunmi Dada, Shaffy Bello and Jude Kosoko, among others.
Other popular works of Soyinka are The Lion and the Jewel (1959), The Trials of Brother Jero (1960), Kongi’s Harvest (1967), Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981). In 2021, the Nobel laureate released his third novel Chronicles From The Land of the Happiest People On Earth, following The Interpreters (1965) and Season of Anomy (1973).
Watch the trailer of The Man Died here.