SA’s first superhero is born

Jongo

Jongo

Published May 25, 2015

Share

The latest Avengers movie recently released and many people marvelled (excuse the pun) at the Marvel Studios’ production. Most of us love the movies, but yearn for TV shows that we can relate to. Well, your prayers have been answered because a local company called Motion Story is finalising the first season of a superhero story.

“I am an author and have written five stories and when I joined the production company that I am with, they needed someone to improve their storytelling. They were great with everything else, but needed my skills because they wanted to venture into TV.

“So we were in the studio, throwing around some ideas, and my partner suggested that we make South Africa’s first superhero TV series. I thought it was ridiculous for a number of reasons, but as time went on we got more confident and did quite well on it,” said Gareth Crocker, the co-creator of the story.

For them the emphasis was on telling the story, not hyping it up with celebrity star-power so you will not see the usual suspects.

“We found a generally unknown cast to make this production as original as possible. Our lead character is a well-built, good-looking guy who is a professional dancer. He’s a dancer in the day and by night he does his superhero duties. I met him at my daughter’s school function where they had hired him to perform and I almost stopped him midway through his performance just to get his details because I knew he was what we were looking for.”

In the story, we meet Eli King, who is a regular Joe living in Joburg until he acquires strange abilities after visiting the Cradle of Humankind. The mysterious death of his father is revealed as a murder and soon Eli, with the help of his super-powers, has to find his father’s killers.

“The story is set in present day Joburg and we hope to spread it to Durban, Cape Town and the rest of the continent. We start in The Cradle Of Humankind and take it from there,” said Crocker.

A project like this costs money and the Motion Story crew had to find funding to carry out their dreams.

“The biggest challenge was to get the cash to push something like this. One of our friends is an investor and when we showed some of the test footage the guy gave us R5 million to kickstart the project so we don’t have to rely on a channel commissioning us and we have full creative control,” explained the co-creator.

So how will this differ from other superhero shows we have seen?

“One of my problems with big productions like the Marvel films is that they are so focused on the action scenes they forget about the story. You don’t get the human aspect of the content and we try to push that. On our show we focus on typical Joburg stories that the main characters go through and the special effects don’t dominate the story but enhance it.”

• Local and international TV channels have shown interest in Jongo. The team will soon announce where you can see it.

Related Topics: