The press rollout for Kunle Afolayan’s upcoming Mokalik has officially kicked off, heralded with a couple of teasers released between late 2018 and now. We know the movie has recruited singer Simi in her first Nollywood role. Also, we’ll be seeing Big Brother Naija alum Tobi Bakre making his first movie appearance, the trailer has fleetingly shown.
The story of Mokalik follows the career of an 11-year-old boy Jaiye from the middle-class suburbs who spends the day as a lowly apprentice at a mechanic shop, in order to view life from the other side of the tracks. According to the award-winning director, Mokalik is a slight departure from the flicks he has helmed in the past, adding that there will be two versions of the film – one for the Nigerian market and the other for the international market.
With a screenplay by Tunde Babalola, Afolayan conceived the idea for Mokalik during his constant visit to the mechanic workshop where he refurbished his much-publicised vintage car recently – a Thunderbird Ford 1965. “Visiting the mechanic workshop after 15 years opened my eyes to a lot of things that I believe the world should know about our local auto car repairs industry,” Afolayan said. In the trailer, we see Jaiye innocuously making comments on Simi’s character in the mechanic workshop – her voice and, uhm, her beauty. Reminder: Jaiye is an 11-yea-old teenager and I felt a bit uneasy watching Simi reply in Yoruba and let me translate: ”You are such a flatterer.”
Mokalik is scheduled to be released this year, but no exact date has been announced. Here’s the trailer below.
When Bernard Dayo isn’t writing about pop culture, he’s watching horror movies and reading comics and trying to pretend his addiction to Netflix isn’t a serious condition.
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