Anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela’s life story is to be turned into a six-part television mini-series co-created by his grandson, the producers behind the multinational project said last Monday. Entitled ‘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 (24 million euros), 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 did not say who would play the democracy icon, whose Nelson Mandela Foundation said 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.
South African production house Out of Africa, Canada’s Blue Ice Films and Britain’s Left Bank Pictures will film mainly on-site in South Africa, the statement said.
Grandson Kweku Mandela, who is co-producing the series, said it would seek to portray Mandela the man instead of Mandela the saint.