Thriller is a retribution slasher about how a childhood prank gone horribly awry can have deadly consequences. Four years later, the nine fickle Compton High School seniors involved are disguising their nightmare-inducing guilt with the typical teenage fare of good grades, football, parties, and misplaced anger. But the past looms in the shadows when a hooded figure aware of their nasty misdeed begins to pick them off during Homecoming weekend. With some old school echoes of the subgenre, Thriller is an ambitious yet overstuffed glimpse into the anxities and despair Black and Latinx teens face. While the film removes itself from the trap of monolithic depictions, it does suffer from following too many characters who get lost in a shuffle of storylines that never come full circle.

The grown folk cast with RZA (also responsible for the film's score), Candyman's Vanessa Williams, Vanessa Bell Calloway (Death Spa), rapper Lady of Rage, and perpetual scene stealer Mykelti Williamson (The Purge: Election Year) buoy the youthful cast of characters who work to avoid poverty, addiction, and the overall hardknocks of managing matters of race with the inevitable prickly angst of teenage identity.

Writer/director Dallas Jackson is a lifelong fan of the genre's anthologies and slashers. He describes Thriller as his "own version of Friday the 13th" in an urban setting. You get the youth, stern adults, and a killer looking to assert vengeance, but even the characters deciphered as the main players don't fully get the arcs they deserve. While I wish Thriller was more focused on just a few characters, it's a sure popcorn affair with enjoyable moments.

Thriller stars actress/model Jessica Allain and the impressive full ensemble cast includes Mykelti Williamson (Forrest Gump), Luke Tennie (SYFY's Deadly Class), Tequan Richmond (Ray), Paige Hurd (Everybody Hates Chris), Chelsea Rendon (Starz' Vida), Mitchell Edwards (The First Purge), Pepi Sonuga (Famous in Love), Jason Woods (Proven Innocent), Maestro Harrell (The Wire), and Michael Ocampo (Shooter).

EXCLUSIVE: Amazon Prime Video is developing Wild Seed, a drama series based on the first book in Octavia E. Butler’s acclaimed Patternist sci-fi series, from Viola Davis and Julius Tennon’s JuVee Productions

Co-written by award-winning sci-fi novelist Nnedi Okorafor and Rafikifilmmaker Wanuri Kahiu who is set to direct, Wild Seed is a love (and hate) story of two African immortals who travel the ages from pre-Colonial West Africa to the far, far future. Doro, a killer who uses his power to breed people like livestock, encounters Anyanwu, a healer who forces him to reassess his millennia of cruel behavior: for centuries, their personal battles change the course of our world as they struggle against the backdrop of time — master vs slave, man vs woman, killer vs healer.

Davis, Tennon and Andrew Wang, JuVee’s head of television development, executive produce with Kahiu, Okorafor, along with Ernestine Walker and Merrilee Heifetz with the Octavia E. Butler estate.

Wild Seed was the first tome chronologically and third to be published in the five-book Patternmaster series from  Science Fiction Hall of Famer Butler, who died in 2006 at the age of 58.

“Wild Seed is a book that shifted my life,” said Davis. “It is as epic, as game changing, as moving and brilliant as any Science Fiction novel ever written. Julius and I are proud to have this masterpiece in our hands. It fullfills our promise and legacy to be disrupters. Octavia Butler was a visionary and we look forward to honoring the scope of her work and sharing it with the world.”

JuVee had pursued the rights to the book for over two years, but it wasn’t until they identified rising talent Kahiu, who was tapped to direct as well as write the pilot with her friend and colleague Okorafor, that the vision became clear on how to turn the beloved book into a TV show. With their idea for a TV series, and the Butler estate’s blessings, the project was taken to the marketplace with multiple bids.

Kahiu and Okorafor both attribute aspects of their career paths to reading Butler’s Wild Seed, in which they saw that there was a voice for women of color and that they too could be that voice. They both identify themselves as Africanfuturists. Kahiu has often referred to her aesthetic as Afro Bubblegum Art.

“We love Octavia Butler and her work and have for decades. But Wild Seed is our favorite. It’s expansive, disturbing, and unique, said Kahiu and Okafor. “Wild Seed stays with you. It’s a love/hate story of African immortals that connects people on the African continent to the Diaspora. It merges the mystical and the scientific seamlessly. You’re going to see shape-shifting, body jumping, telepaths, people born with the ability to defy the laws of physics, all in the context of our past, present and future world.”

Kahiu most recently directed and wrote the acclaimed LGBTQ feature Rafiki, which made history last year as the first Kenyan film to screen at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was also selected for the Toronto International Film Festival, BFI London International Film Festival and AFI Fest, among others.

Okorafor is an international novelist of African-based science fiction, fantasy and magical realism for both children and adults.  Okarafor’s books include Binti, which was the winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novella and was optioned by Media Res; and Who Fears, which is currently in development at HBO with George R. R. Martin and Michael Lombardo. Her novel, The Book of Phoenix, was a finalist for both the Arthur C. Clarke Award and John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Her AkataSeries won the 2018 Locus Award and the 2018 Lodestar award for the World Science Fiction Society Award for Best Young Adult Book.

Butler was a renowned African-American writer who received a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award, in addition to Nebula and Hugo awards, given for the best works in the science-fiction genre. Acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories, Butler’s work is translated into 12 foreign languages and her books are taught in over 400 college courses. A graphic novel version of Kindred won an Eisner Award for Best Adaptation and reached the #1 spot on the New York Times Graphic Novel Best Seller List. Both Kindred and Dawn are currently in development for television, with Ava DuVernay, Charles D. King’s Macro and Victoria Mahoney shepherding the Dawn adaptation.

“We couldn’t think of more perfect partners to bring Octavia’s feminist century-spanning epic to life than Viola Davis, JuVee Productions and the brilliant creative team of Wanuri Kahiu and Nnedi Okorafor — and we are so excited to be working with the tenacious and passionate Amazon team, whose enthusiasm for Wild Seed seems immeasurable,” said Ernestine Walker and Merrilee Heifetz, the Octavia E. Butler Estate and Literary Executor. “We have complete faith in this vision for her work, which will thrill the readers who have loved these novels for decades, as well as bring new fans, both to the page and to what is sure to be an important and mind-blowing adaptation.”

JuVee Productions is repped by CAA , The Lasher Group and attorney James M. Feldman of Lichter Grossman Nichols Adler Feldman and Clark. Kahiu is repped by CAA and Gotham Group. Okorafor is repped by WME with Donald Maass and Gotham Group. The Butler Estate is repped by Anonymous Content on behalf of Writers House.

Netflix is adding to its growing slate of African content with its first original animated series, “Mama K’s Team 4,” produced by South Africa’s award-winning Triggerfish Animation Studios and British kids’ and family entertainment production company CAKE.

The series follows four teenage girls living in a futuristic version of Lusaka, Zambia, who are recruited by a retired secret agent to save the world. It was created by Zambian writer Malenga Mulendema, who in 2015 was one of eight winners of the Triggerfish Story Lab, a pan-African talent search backed by the Cape Town-based animation studio and The Walt Disney Co. The series is designed by the Cameroonian artist Malcolm Wope.

In the past decade, Triggerfish has become a powerhouse in South Africa’s burgeoning animation industry. Its first two animated features, “Adventures in Zambezia” (2012) and “Khumba” (2013), are two of the five top-grossing South African movies of all time.