Julius Onah (Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival)
Alum Julius Onah is set to direct two high profile projects in 2022: Bad Genius for Picturestart and Samo Lives for Endeavor Content.
Bad Genius, which is an English-remake of the hit 2017 Thai film by Nattawut Poonpiriya, is a college admissions scandal thriller. According to Deadline, the US-set adaptation is being described as a high-octane thriller about a group of entrepreneurial high school seniors who team up to take down a rigged college admissions system. Former Lionsgate film chiefs Wachsberger and Feig are producing, who recently produced the Oscar-nominated Coda.
Onah will also direct Samo Lives for Endeavor Content, which notably produced Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Oscar-nominated The Lost Daughter. According to Variety, the Jean-Michael Basquiat biopic “will celebrate the life, career and impact of the groundbreaking New York-born, Haitian-Puerto Rican American artist whose seminal paintings and street art defined the Neo-expressionism arts movement of the 1980s.”
“Jean-Michel Basquiat redefined the idea of who ascends to the highest altitudes of the fine art world. But the complexity and richness of his experience as an artist and child of the African diaspora has yet to be dramatized in the manner it deserves,” Onah wrote. “It’s an honor to work with Kelvin and my collaborators, and with Endeavor Content, to celebrate the legacy of an artist who has invited audiences everywhere to be inspired by the transformative power of art.”