Diversity continues to flourish over at Disney this year, set to be celebrated by the animation studios with the release of a new movie they’ve called on actress Lupita Nyong’o to star in.

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Named ‘Queen of Katwe‘, the project tells the story of a young girl named Phiona Mutesi who rises from the slums of Uganda to become a world renown chess prodigy and will see Lupita play Phiona’s mother, Harriet Mutesi.

Deadline reveals:

Katwe is based on Tim Crothers’ 2011 ESPN The Magazinearticle and subsequent book The Queen Of Katwe: A Story Of Life, Chess, And One Extraordinary Girl’s Dream Of Becoming A Grandmaster.

The movie will be shot in South Africa and Uganda, the latter where Nair lives and runs the Maisha Film Labs, a film training initiative to give aspiring filmmakers there the tools and knowledge to tell their own stories through film and eventually create a local industry there. Nair’s 1991 film Mississippi Masala was shot on location in Kampala.

Nyong’o’s nabbing of the role comes after she joined the cast of the forthcoming ‘Star Wars’ release and joined Brad Pitt to ready the release of ‘Americanah‘, the film adaptation of the Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie of the same name.

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