FIRST LOOK. Showmax releases first official trailer for African fantasy drama series Blood Psalms.

by Thinus Ferreira

Showmax has released the first official trailer for its long-gestating 12-episode African fantasy drama series, Blood Psalms, from Yellowbone Entertainment which will make its debut on Showmax on 28 September with weekly episodes.

Blood Psalms which faced several delays mostly due to a lack of promised funding from the South African government in the country's film rebate scheme, was supposed to debut in October 2021, was then moved to February 2022, missed the February 2022 release date, and is finally being released in September 2022 - a year later than originally planned.

Blood Psalms, a R85 million co-production between MultiChoice's video streaming service and Canal+, is touted as the largest and most expensive TV series ever filmed on South African soil.

Filmed in the Eastern Cape, Gauteng and North West provinces with a massive cast, the Showmax Original from creators Layla Swart and Jahmil X.T. Qubeka will have its world premiere next Wednesday on 24 August in Cape Town as the opening screening at MIP Africa as part of FAME Week Africa.

Here's the trailer:

Blood Psalms is set in "Ancient Africa" 1 000 years after the fall of Atlantis, the five surviving houses of Kemet find themselves beset with fears of a prophesied end of days. 

Bokang Phelane is Princess Zazi, a teenage princess, with Mothusi Magano as her father, the mad king Letsha. Zolisa Xaluva is General Toka, the head of her father's Akachi army.

The rest of the cast includes Bongile Mantsai, Hamilton Dlamini, Hlubi Mboya, S'dumo Mtshali, Siv Ngesi), Thishiwe Ziqubu, Warren Masemola, Enhle Mbali Mlotshwa, Niza Jay, Richard Lukunku, Sello Maake kaNcube, Thando Thabethe, Thembekile Komani, Zikhona Sodlaka, Faniswa Yisa, Faith Baloyi, Lemogang Tsipa and Thabo Rametsi. 

"Blood Psalms is the biggest and most ambitious series we've ever made, completely unlike any other African series you've ever seen," says Nomsa Philiso, MultiChoice's head of programming, in a prepared press release.

Bokang Phelane says "This show was specifically created as a reimagining of ourselves as Africans, as an answer to ‘Who are we?’ It's done in a very entertaining way, with a lot of drama and action." 

Mothusi Magano in the press release says "Blood Psalms is a heck of a ride and it's never been done before".

"For Africans, mostly, our history goes back 200 years. That's what we've been given, and it's from Western perspectives. We really don't know anything much about our own history. So Blood Psalms poses a lot of questions and will give people a lot to think about."

Sello Maake kaNcube says "One thing that was brilliant for us was no use of an English word, whatsoever. That was a big challenge even for a lot of actors, you know, because most of the time we are used to performing and doing a mixture of African languages and English. This time, the dialogue is purely in African languages."

Layla Swart in the Showmax press release says "What we're trying to do is to reclaim the continent's history from an African perspective".

"Blood Psalms draws from elements of a multitude of African mythologies and looks at various different tribes in season 1 - the Akachi, the Uchawi, the Ku’ua, the Chini, and Great Nziwemabwe - as they migrated south from Kemet, which is now Egypt, and formed their cultures".

ALSO READ: As MultiChoice previews Showmax's Blood Psalms with a first-look viewing in Dubai the South African media take umbrage: 'Share the content with journalists who report on TV content'. 

ALSO READ: Blood Psalms to debut on MultiChoice's Showmax in February 2022, 'It was scary and a massive challenge,' says showrunner Layla Swart.

ALSO READ: MultiChoice's expensive Blood Psalms in jeopardy as a Showmax Original as Yellowbone Entertainment producers are forced to go to court over millions due in unpaid South African film rebates to finish their series.

ALSO READ: Blood Psalms drama series co-produced by Showmax and Canal+ and based on Xhosa legend reveals huge black cast.

Blood Psalms to debut on MultiChoice's Showmax in February 2022, 'It was scary and a massive challenge,' says showrunner Layla Swart.

by Thinus Ferreira

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."

ALSO READ: As MultiChoice previews Showmax's Blood Psalms with a first-look viewing in Dubai the South African media take umbrage: 'Share the content with journalists who report on TV content'.

ALSO READ: TV REVIEW. MultiChoice and M-Net's 1 Night with Mzansi special done from Dubai is little more than boring puffery and yawnful paint-by-numbers programmatic content.

ALSO READ: MultiChoice and M-Net prep a 2-hour 1 Night with Mzansi live variety TV special for DStv subscribers on Sunday 17 October from the Dubai Opera House.