The Inside Story Behind Disneys Radical Queen of Katwe

Tendo Nagenda finally had a plan. It was winter 2013; the Disney exec had spent months quietly developing a movie about a young girl in Uganda who became an international chess star, and now he knew who he wanted to direct it. Mira Nair didnt really know Nagenda, but he happened to be visiting family in her backyard in the Ugandan city of Kampala, so he called her out of the blue. She didnt mind; she invited him over for tea.

I called her from the street somewhere; she said Oh, Im at home, why dont you come up? Nagenda remembers. And I was like, Oh, Im with my family, do you want to meet tomorrow? Shes like, No, just bring em!

That day, in the bamboo grove of her garden, the two made a pact: They were going to make a movie about Phiona Mutesi, a chess champion from the Kampala slum of Katwe. And they were going to get Disneythe home of Star Wars and Marvel and animated movies about lost fishto make it. They just, like their protagonists signature move, had to be smart and aggressive.

The movie they made is Queen of Katwe, out today. It is a very Disney movie in that it centers around a family and has a happy ending. But it is a very un-Disney story in that it unblinkingly examines the poverty, violence, and racism its protagonists face every day. It is, in the words of its director, a radical film for Disney in many ways. It has beauty and barbarity side-by-side.

Looking Outside the Magic Kingdom

Thats the way Nagenda wanted it. His father is from Uganda and the young executive, who joined Disney in 2010 after a stint with Brad Pitts Plan B, wanted to bring a movie to his studio that would push the boundaries of what people inside and outside of the company considered a Mouse House movie. Mutesis against-all-odds story, Nagenda felt, had the necessary magic, but it was also the kind of tale that would take audiences somewhere they might not otherwise get the chance to go. Thats our job to do at Disney and I want[ed] to it with this one, he says, as improbable as it was.

So he made a plan to do it. He had first heard about Mutesi in October of 2012, the same year Disney acquired the rights to writer Tim Crothers book about the chess star. (Crothers had first chronicled Mutesi’s story they year before in ESPN The Magazine.) Still, Nagenda kept the idea in his pocket. He was still new at the studio and needed some sure-fire hits before he could get his passion project off the ground. He helmed a movie about Walt Disney the manSaving Mr. Banksand made the studios live-action reboot of Cinderella, which garnered critical praise and more than $540 million at the worldwide box office.

I used all of the equity I had built at that moment to put forward this movie.Disney executive vice president of production Tendo Nagenda

But all the while he worked on Katwe. He brought on Nair, who in turn recruited her Reluctant Fundamentalist screenwriter William Wheeler to punch up the script. He was lucky in that his boss at Disney, Sean Bailey, let him spend money on the film without a formal greenlight and without much interference, but Nagenda knew he had to really have the goods if he wanted to get the movie made. Enter: Lupita Nyongo.

By late 2014, the Queen of Katwescript had had nearly a year of rewrites and was in good shape.The part of Phionas strong, skeptical mother, Nakku Harriet, had been written expressly for Nyongo, whocoincidentallyhad been Nairs intern when she was making her 2006 movie The Namesake. The director sent her the script. I got 10 pages into it and I had to put it down, Nyongo says. I was weeping. The Oscar-winning actresssaid yes immediately. David Oyelowo, hot off of his turn as Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma, was similarlyinterested in taking on the role of Phiona Mutesis chess coach, Robert Katende.

Nagenda had a good track record, a good script, and bona fide stars. All he needed was a greenlight.I used all of the equity I had built,” he says of his successes with Cinderella andSaving Mr. Banks, “to put forward this movie.With Nyongo in place, Nagenda began working on a plan and a budget to take to Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn. In January 2015, Horngave Nagenda the greenlight and, along with a few suggestions, $15 million to make his passion project.

Beyond Katwe

Queen of Katwe was shot over a couple of months in Uganda and South Africa. Nair, Nyongo, Oyelowo, and newcomer Madina Nalwanga, who plays Phiona, all spent time with their offscreen counterparts to learn how to best represent their lives onscreen. It was tight to schedule the shoot to work amongits stars’ other big projectsbut it worked.

The result is a film that tells a very shiny story not too dissimilar from any sports drama or, say, Akeelah and the Beeexcept that it happens in one of the poorest countries in the world and involves a young girl (Phiona was 11 years old when she won her first chess championship in Uganda) whose family is often left homeless and who, in one of the movies more gut-punching scenes, asks her coach, Very soon, men will start coming after mewheres my safe square? It was, to hear its director tell it, not sanitized and also very real.

Disney didnt shy away from the reality I was bringing to them, Nair says. But there was also a vibrancy to it. Its not the suffering Africa that people associate with these stories. Its not about hanging your head and wanting to be saved by somebody who comes from the outside.

Disney didnt shy away from the reality I was bringing to them. But there was also a vibrancy to it. Its not the suffering Africa that people associate with these stories. Its not about hanging your head and wanting to be saved by somebody who comes from the outside.Queen of Katwe director Mira Nair

That second part is what Oyelowo finds most encouraging. The excuse in the past for crowbarring white protagonists into these kinds of films has been to try to make them relatable to a Western audience,” he says, “or just to not make them at all because Oh, people wont be able to relate. Its in a place called Katwe with people with funny names.’ So to have the largest media company in the world back this film is something very special.

Queen of Katwe opened earlier this month at the Toronto International Film Festivalan atypical premiere fora Disney film, but Nagenda wanted to show that it could hold its own against any other movie at the festival. (He did a similar thing by taking Cinderella to the Berlin Film Festival in 2015.) The movieopens wide this weekend, so its uncertain if Nagenda has a hit on his hands, but it’salready doing well with criticsits currently at 91 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

But even if Katwe isnt a blockbuster tentpole, the next big movie on his slate might be: director Ava DuVernays adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time. The movie, which has been kept quiet since it was announced earlier this year, is the culmination of Nagendas years-long pursuit of DuVernay to direct something. (It also may re-team DuVernay with her Selma star Oyelowo, who says theyre in talks.) Its also another opportunity to bring diversity to the creators working for Disney, even if Nagenda says thats not a mission, per se.

One of the things in and around diversity or inclusion that I think gets overlooked is people simplify it to something that has to do with race or culture. Its a lot more than that for me, and I think for Disney, he says. Its about the type of stories. Queen of Katwe is a true story instead of a fictional story. But its also a story told from a female perspective and a female-empowered point-of-view. And it was made with and by extremely strong women. And its set in a different place and a different culture. All of those things add to inclusive storytelling. I hope that catches peoples attention as much as the hue of the people onscreen.