Main: General Nanisca (Viola Davis, centre) leads all-female army the Amazons out to fight.
“SOME THINGS ARE worth fighting for,” says Viola Davis’ military leader in the early footage of The Woman King screened at this year’s CinemaCon. With her sword and stacked muscles, this is not a woman you want to cross, although a whole bunch of invaders want to do just that in order to overpower the Kingdom of Dahomey, one of the most powerful states in 18th-and 19th-century Africa.
A mammoth cast have assembled to join Davis in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s historical epic. John Boyega plays King Ghezo, Dahomey’s ruler, with Lashana Lynch and The Underground Railroad standouts Sheila Atim and Thuso Mbedu part of his tribe. Davis, who also serves as a producer on the film, has described the project as her “magnum opus”, and plays Nanisca, general of this all-female army known as the Amazons. Their journey will spotlight how real-life African warrior women staved off slavery, colonialism and inter-tribal warfare.