Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
After more than ten years of waiting, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s award-winning 2013 novel, Americanah, is officially being adapted for screen.
The project has been picked up by French media giant Canal+ as part of its newly unveiled slate of African-focused content.
The announcement was shared by the African Film Press via their Instagram page (@africanfilmpress), confirming that Americanah is featured under Canal+ Group’s “Creating African Stories with Global Resonance” banner in their 2025 full-year results and strategic update.
A Decade of Development Hurdles
The journey to bring Americanah to the screen has been plagued by delays and cancellations:
-
2014: Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o initially acquired the rights, intending to star in and produce a feature film adaptation.
-
2019: The project transitioned to television when HBO Max ordered a 10-episode limited series. Nyong’o remained attached to star, with Black Panther actress Danai Gurira signed on as the writer and showrunner.
-
2020: The HBO Max adaptation collapsed entirely due to pandemic-era production delays, which created scheduling conflicts that ultimately forced Nyong’o to exit the project.
Canal+’s New African Strategy
The revival of Americanah aligns with Canal+’s broader strategy to heavily invest in localized African storytelling following its recent acquisition of MultiChoice and DSTV. By emphasizing local content creation and wider continental distribution, the media giant aims to elevate African narratives to a global audience.
Americanah joins an ambitious development lineup that includes:
-
Agoodjie: A project centering on the Women Warriors of Dahomey.
-
The Heist of Benin: A high-profile project with Ava DuVernay and David Oyelowo attached.
-
A musical project: Tied to Paul Simon’s iconic Graceland album and The Road Home.
What Lies Ahead
Canal+ has not yet clarified whether this upcoming adaptation will retain any links to the previous HBO Max script or if it will be built entirely from scratch as a brand-new project.
Americanah follows the lives of Ifemelu and Obinze as they navigate migration to the United States and the United Kingdom, before eventually returning to Nigeria. The novel, which masterfully explores race, identity, and the modern immigrant experience, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (2013) and was named one of The New York Times Book Review’s Ten Best Books of 2013.
