South African TV personality plans movie on Nigerian chess whiz-kid

South African comedian and TV personality, Trevor Noah, is currently working on a movie production about a fast-rising eight-year-old Nigerian chess prodigy, Tanitoluwa “Tani” Adewumi.

Ripples Nigeria gathered that Noah would produce the film under his Day Zero Productions imprint alongside business partner, Haroon Salem.

Noah, who once hosted the award-winning The Daily Show, became interested in the child progidy after the New York Times report on his rise from obscurity to global fame.

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Adewumi had only been playing chess for a year when he won the New York State Scholastic Chess Championship in 2018.

State Street Pictures and Mainstay Entertainment were also named in the report as producers of the movie which featured the Adewumi family’s survival story from their days in the asylum to New York, and the lengths that parents would go to for their children.

The movie acquired by Paramount Studios will also be adapted from a trio of books on the family, which would be released through HarperCollins’ W Publishing imprint in the year 2020.

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