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\u201cAt the beginning, I thought we were digging a deep hole for ourselves, as people feel so passionately about this character,\u201d says Angus Gibson, the director and co-creator of South Africa\u2019s biggest-ever production, Shaka iLembe<\/em>.<\/p>\n The character in question is King Shaka, or ShakakaSenzangakhona, the most famous of the Zulu kings who ruled in a pre-colonial era. A hugely important figure in South Africa\u2019s Zulu culture, he has often been portrayed in Western media as a brutal warlord, a contrast to the tough military and political leader that most scholars agree he was. The desire behind the making of the series was to right that wrong.<\/p>\n More from Deadline<\/strong><\/p>\n Gibson, Desire\u00e9 Markgraaff and Teboho Mahlatsi \u2014 the experienced trio behind Shaka iLembe<\/em> production house Bomb! Productions \u2014 knew the project would become career-defining. They wanted to tell a King Shaka story that South Africans felt was their own, and to wash away decades of pre-colonial history they didn\u2019t recognize.<\/p>\n \u201cThis story was deeply important to us because African history has been underserved in almost every way,\u201d says Markgraaff.\u201c There is very little television or film that explores the history of this rich and compelling continent \u2014 the very cradle of humankind. Telling this story felt like the first step in helping to change that: To create something beautiful that Africans everywhere could connect with.\u201d<\/p>\n The founders of Bomb! have built a reputation for creating films and TV shows that placed an African eye on storytelling. Gibson co-directed the late Jonathan Demme\u2019s Oscar-nominated Nelson Mandela biography, Mandela: Son of Africa, Father of a Nation<\/em>, Teboho made Silver Lion-winning short Portrait of a Young Man Drowning<\/em> and Markgraaff was a co-producer on the multi-award-winning doc series Amandla!: A Revolution in Four Part Harmony<\/em>. The trio also made Yizo Yizo<\/em>, a visceral and honest late-1990s South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) drama series set in a Johannesburg township school. Still, taking on Shaka would be an entirely different challenge.<\/p>\n Gibson recalls how the original idea was to create a pre-colonial film or series first, covering different narratives about largely obscure figures from across Africa. However, M-Net, the South African pay-TV channel owned by African content giant MultiChoice, suggested focusing on the Zulu king \u2014 by far the most prominent historical figure from South Africa\u2019s pre-colonial era.<\/p>\n