Ebonylife Studios Secures Rights to Produce Movie On Hushpuppi
Mo Abudu, CEO of Ebonylife studios in collaboration with Will Parker president, James Lopez joined forces to produce an untitled recount of the life of Nigerian fraudster, Hushpuppi.
The duo secured rights to Bloomberg’s article ‘The Fall of the Billionaire Gucci Master’, based on the Nigerian fraudster Ramon Abbas popularly known as Hushpuppi.
Confirming the new partnership, Nigerian movie producer and one time most influential woman in Africa, Mosunmola Abudu, took to her Instagram page to reveal that she had pitched the story idea to Will Parker productions in 2020.
“When the Hushpuppi story made headlines last year, I pitched the story idea to @willpowerpacker and James Lopez. They bought the idea and as headlined in this press release, together we won the rights to the Bloomberg article by Evan Ratliff mentioned above. The rights were won after a highly contested derby by several producers and is now set up at Universal Pictures,” Abudu wrote.
The untitled project is set to be an action thriller, detailing the Evan Ratliff written article on how hushpuppi was nabbed by the American government for money laundering and fraud. The project will be produced by James Lopez for Will Parker production and Abudu for ebonylife studios.
Reportedly, the action thriller is to be a hybrid of Steven Spielberg’s 2002 pseudo biographical crime film ‘Catch Me If You Can’ and Bryan Singer’s 1995 neo-noir mystery thriller film ‘The Usual Suspects’.
The hushpuppi saga broke out in 2020 when the fraudster was arrested in UAE and extradited to the USA.
The embattled Instagram influencer a while back pleaded guilty to money laundering and business compromise schemes leading him to defraud his victims of over $24 million.
The hushpuppi case is still ongoing and has further revealed other cases of fraud.
Nigerian media group EbonyLife Studios is dedicated to creating world-class and authentic African stories, through a range of co-production deals with international studios. As a TV and feature film producer, EbonyLife has created more than 5,000 hours of original programming across a variety of genres, as well as seven feature films, three of which are the highest-grossing movies of all time at the Nigerian box office.
F.T.S/S.I
