Netflix has landed this upcoming film written by Daniel Kaluuya which has this Top Boy star leading the cast.
Shadow and Act has confirmed that Netflix’s upcoming film, The Kitchen, will be written by Kaluuya and Joe Murtagh and set in a future London destroyed by inequality. The film is an original idea from Kaluuya, Daniel Emmerson and Kibwe Tavares. Kaluuya and Emmerson will also produce via Kaluuya’s 59% Productions and Emmerson’s DMC Film. Michael Fassbender, who co-founded DMC Film with Emmerson, will also produce.
It makes sense Netflix would invest in The Kitchen, since the film plays on the extreme themes found in its breakout hit Squid Game and shows like Money Heist. In The Kitchen, London is facing its worst divide between the haves and have nots in 2044, with temporary living spaces replacing social housing.
The Kitchen, however, is a big wrinkle in the plans the rich have to keep the poor away. The Kitchen serves as London’s last village for people who refuse to move to the outskirts, where the temporary housing is. The film’s main characters Izi (Top Boy‘s Kane Robinson aka Kano) and Benji (newcomer Jedaiah Bannerman) are two of its residents; Izi wants to leave the Kitchen, while Benji, a 12-year-old, has lost his mother. Both work together to come out on top of a society that wants to push them down.
The Kitchen isn’t just Kaluuya‘s screenwriting debut; it’s also the feature directorial debut for Tavares, and the film will be the launchpad for multiple young British actors. Casting director Aisha Bywaters discovered Bannerman and other talent for the film, and plans to use the film as a vehicle to jumpstart several young careers.
Kaluyya and Tavares both gave statements about the film, with Kaluuya saying how he is finally engaging in an idea he’s had since 2011.
“In 2011, I was in my barbershop and there was a guy boasting about smash and grabs–kids doing million-pound heists in a minute, getting paid 200 pounds to do it. I saw the potential to unlock a unique story door to the inequality, fatherhood, class, joy, resilience, courage, defiance and care of London,” he said in a statement received by S&A. “Now, nearly a decade later, Kibwe Tavares, Daniel Emmerson and I are about to start production, immersing ourselves in a dystopian London that interrogates what ‘care’ means, at home and as a society and the dangers in our future if we stay indifferent to everything around us.”
“The Kitchen is very much a love letter to London, the city that has defined my childhood and ultimately my identity. It’s set in an extreme version of our current world; our characters have little choice but to let the city take over them,” said Tavares. “Through Benji, a 12-year-old in need of care, we explore what we as society lose in the ever-changing and shifting patterns of life, of our cities. This is a film for all the communities out there that are trying to take care of each other.”
