[b]"I confess that I have never been able to finish Chimamanda Adichie’s second novel, “Half of a Yellow Sun,” set during the Biafran War in the late 1960s. (Btw, it won high praise from mainstream Western critics. See here, here and here.) By the time I finally do finish it, the film version will probably be in theaters. The Nigerian-British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor (highlights: Dirty Pretty Things and Inside Man) has already agreed to star in the film adaptation, alongside with Dominic Cooper (Captain America). This week Screen Daily reported that Zimbabwean-Brit actress Thandi Newton (credits: Crash, Mission Impossible) will be a female lead. Not everyone is happy with the choice of Newton as a female lead. There’s already a strange online petition to have Newton replaced with a Nigerian actress. The petition notes, among others, that “… Igbo people do not look like the bi-racial Thandie Newton.” You can read similar comments on posts about Newton’s casting at the popular film blog Shadow and Act here and here.

* Btw, separate from casting issues, the previous credits of the two producers of “Half of a Yellow Sun” include “The Last King of Scotland” and “The Constant Gardener,” both films noted for their problematic treatments of African subjects. As for Ejiofor, he has played Africans on screen before. In “Dirty Pretty Things” he was excellent as an African migrant caught up in the goings on at a seedy London hotel, while in the not-so-good “Red Dust“ he played an activist appearing before South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He has also played Thabo Mbeki in the made-for-TV movie “Endgame.”[/b]
http://africasacountry.com/2012/01/27/half-of-a-yellow-sun/

Thandie Newton

People make loads of fuss about nothing didnt Sophie Okenedo play in Hotel Rwanda the last time I checked that she is not a Hutu or Tusti, Kerry Washington in Last King of Scotland she's american... at the end of the day he who blows the piper controls the tune. The funding of the film is not coming from Nigeria and the cinema viewers are mostly Americans, thats why the want PROFESSIONALS

baby-boy:
People make loads of fuss about nothing didnt Sophie Okenedo play in Hotel Rwanda the last time I checked that she is not a Hutu or Tusti, Kerry Washington in Last King of Scotland she's american... at the end of the day he who blows the piper controls the tune. The funding of the film is not coming from Nigeria and the cinema viewers are mostly Americans, thats why the want PROFESSIONALS

That's where it boils down to really, this movie no matter what will be a Hollywood movie, nobody from Nollwyood is funding it what so ever so nobody should complain. This is what Hollywood always does, that is the sad truth

Many subject matters in history like world war 1 and 2 have multiple movies made with respect to them so anybody unhappy wit d castin should simply get out his money and shoot his own version! Its not as if its d nigerian govt or UN that is fundin it. Let's stop this hypocrisy, I know many ibo girls that are fairer than thandie abi una neva enta zenith bank? Come to think of it isn't it y they are called actors/actresses?

yoji: Many subject matters in history like world war 1 and 2 have multiple movies made with respect to them so anybody unhappy wit d castin should simply get out his money and shoot his own version! Its not as if its d nigerian govt or UN that is fundin it. Let's stop this hypocrisy, I know many ibo girls that are fairer than thandie abi una neva enta zenith bank? Come to think of it isn't it y they are called actors/actresses?

cosign, lol

With a GRADE A actress like Thandie you would think people would be grateful she would use her "celebrity status" to make the story of Biafra known to the world.

i think the world knew of biafra long before she was born.

just saying.

the war ended in 1970.

semid4lyfe: Same comment at link below. . .

https://www.nairaland.com/938087/chimamanda-adichie-half-yellow-sun/1#10957866

interesting