Funke Akindele has revealed that her new movie, Behind The Scenes, was inspired by a divine instruction that completely altered her original production plans.
During the FilmOne end-of-year exhibitor showcase, the acclaimed filmmaker revealed that she had initially planned to work on the sequel to ‘A Tribe Called Judah’ and had already begun rehearsals and negotiations before being spiritually led to make a different film.
The 38-year-old award-winning movie producer said that despite attempting four other scripts and exploring potential collaborations, she continued to receive divine instructions to set them aside.
Akindele said the idea for ‘Behind The Scenes’ was born from a single moment of inspiration, which she described as “deeply relatable and reflective of what many people experience in real life”.
“We weren’t supposed to release ‘Behind The Scenes’. I actually wanted to release ‘A Tribe Called Judah 2’. We’d even started rehearsals, negotiations, you know, training. But the Spirit of God kept telling me, ‘No, you will not shoot that film,’” she said.
“We tried, we tried almost four other scripts, lovely scripts, and the Spirit of God said, ‘You are joking’. We even wanted to partner with someone, a fantastic actor and filmmaker, but the Spirit of God said, ‘You’re wasting your time. You will shoot this film.’
“And the idea just came from one scene, and I said, ‘This is relatable’. A lot of people are going through what is happening in this film, what is going to happen, what you’re going to see in this movie.”
‘Behind The Scenes’, which stars Tobi Bakare, Veeiye, Uzor Arukwe, Ini Dima-Okojie, and Ibrahim Chatta, is set to hit cinemas nationwide on December 12.