Sci-fi encourages South African films

CAPE TOWN -- Using the wealth of 2009's "District 9" still fresh inside their minds, producers are cherry-picking South African sci-fi characteristics, which causes it to be among most widely used genres this side of Swedish crime fiction. Two high-profile book adaptations and many other sci-fi and fantasy fiction features will be in development round the region.South African producer Helena Spring ("Yesterday") just bought the film rights to "Zoo City," Lauren Beukes' 2011 Arthur C. Clarke Award champion,. a gritty urban noir fantasy of a lady that has a sloth on her behalf account back, produces email scam letters, and contains the capacity to discover lost things. When she's hired having a reclusive music producer to locate weaponry testing pop star, she hopes it's her ticket in the slum she calls home.American producer Kisha Cameron-Dingle, director in the Focus Features Africa First Online Video Program who also provides a preliminary-look deal with the studio, has scooped within the rights to Nigerian author Nneki Okorafor's 2011 World Fantasy Award champion "Who Fears Dying?," a coming-of-age fantasy story, occur a rural Africa far afterwards, where a female wizard reshapes the dystopian desert landscape -- Cameron-Dingle known to it "?'Lord in the Rings' in Africa."Kenyan Wanuri Kahiu ("In the Whisper," "Pumzi") is slated to produce and direct Who Fears Dying?" while Beukes, an experienced TV author, has first use adapt the "Zoo City" script.Cameron-Dingle and South African producer David Horler may also be developing "Tok Tokkie," a advanced Cape Town ghost thriller put together by Jenna Bass, a graduate of both Africa First and Story Camping, Focus Features' invitation-only laboratory and workshop for projects under $millions of. "Tok Tokkie" won this year's Durban FilmMart, taking home the Hubert Bals Fund Award of 5,000 ($6,700) for promising African project.Told within the POV from the ghost, "Tok Tokkie" might be the farthest along in the three projects: it's local production funding within the National Film and Video Foundation, which is trying to find more income to shoot in 2012, with Bass pointing.A number of other South African genre projects may also be showed up. The first ones to shoot will most likely be Etienne Fourie's "The Windmill," an appreciation story of a choose couple of of aging pals who identify the water pumped in to a pond with a classic windmill maintains youth, only temporarily, with unforeseen effects. ZenHQ Films produces. Contact the number newsroom at news@variety.com