MultiChoice, M-Net and Showmax's 10-episode African mythos series from creative duo Layla Swart and Jahmil X.T Qubeka's Yellowbone Entertainment will debut on Showmax in February 2022 with Jahmil X.T Qubeka who revealed that Blood Psalms will make its debut on the streaming service early next year.
MultiChoice did a "viewing" and panel discussion for Blood Psalms on Tuesday evening in Dubai as part of its Expo 2020 Dubai marketing exercise in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
MultiChoice's inexplicable move to do a first viewing and panel session for Blood Psalms in Dubai, inaccessible to local media, stirred anger and resentment under the South African press corps covering television, upset over the way in which MultiChoice is promoting so-called "homegrown TV series" like Reyka and Blood Psalms outside of South Africa's borders first.
Following Reyka, Blood Psalms as a Showmax Original, is now the second series for which MultiChoice is doing foreign cast and crew panel sessions and previews - and first - but without any similar effort or the same access for series given to local press in South Africa.
Reyka made its debut screening at the Monte Carlo TV festival in Monaco in June where a cast and crew panel session for media and buyers was also held. M-Net did nothing similar in South Africa for the local media with no virtual or in-person media session, and requests to interview the showrunner that were ignored.
For Blood Psalms, MultiChoice decided that Dubai - months before the series' debut date - is more important than South Africa as the show's first stop for a viewing and cast and crew media session.
Ironically, although not unexpected, by Thursday afternoon only one of the media flown by MultiChoice to Dubai to cover its various Dubai Expo 2020 activities like the disappointing 1 Night With Mzansi variety special on Sunday night, have managed to file a report about Tuesday evening's Blood Psalms panel session.
Media flown at great cost to Dubai appeared more interested in sharing multiple lifestyle selfies on Instagram and Twitter about their weeklong MultiChoice-sponsored staycation than about what they went to presumably cover, snapping and sharing images from boat parties, hotel rooms, desert excursions and nightclub afterparties but with little to no reporting about MultiChoice, M-Net, DStv and Showmax and their actual content.
Layla Swart and Jahmil X.T Qubeka were joined in Dubai for MultiChoice's Blood Psalms panel session by cast members Zolisa Xaluva playing soldier Toka, and Zikhona Sodlaka who plays Sithenjwa, with the two characters who end up marrying each other.
Thando Tabethe plays Heka, a god manifesting as a physical being, with Faith Baloyi as Queen Assilli and the court's advisor with access to magic, while Bokang Pehalane is cast in the role of the teenage Princess Zazi trying to save her people from a world-ending prophecy.
Speaking about Blood Psalms in Dubai, Layla Swart said "I knew it was ambitious. I knew it was a longshot. And I knew it was going to be very difficult to present to any finance partner something so novel - something so, that has never been done before."
"We really fought to do it in vernac(ular language). The space of such a high-end production is also a space that we hope will be received internationally and globally and that often means that it needs to be in a language that is accessible."
"But I'm proud that we fought for that and I'm proud of the product that we've created. Jahmil and I have this saying of you must never be fearless but you must fear less. I think that really encapsulates what Blood Psalms was to us."
"It was scary, it was a massive challenge. We didn't know how we would do it. And I mean, every step was a challenge but we feared less."
Jahmil X.T Qubeka during Tuesday evening's panel discussion remarked that it's very important to have heroes "but because of our turbulent past, black South Africans don't have that. We don't have archetypes that we can hold onto."
"We've got Shaka. Maybe a few here or there. But you know what I mean. I talk in the contemporary space. It's very important that we see ourselves in projections - not just in our current situation, but in our possibility. And for me really that was the main mission: It's to bring back heroes again."
