Daniel Kalu­uya will turn writer/​producer for dystopi­an Lon­don thriller The Kitchen

One of the most reward­ing celebri­ty nar­ra­tives of the 2010s was Daniel Kalu­uya​‘s amply-deserved rise to fame, from a clutch break­out role on the Black Mir­ror episode ​“Fif­teen Mil­lion Mer­its” to an Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tion for his star-mak­ing turn in Get Out to a win for Judas and the Black Mes­si­ah. Now, he’s about to hit anoth­er one of the bench­marks that dis­tin­guish­es a tal­ent on the rise as an upper­most-tier screen idol here to stay.

Net­flix announced today that they’re team­ing with Kalu­uya on a new film called The Kitchen, which he’s signed on to pro­duce and co-write with Joe Murtagh (writer of the Irish crime saga Calm with Hors­es) based on an idea cred­it­ed to him, Kib­we Tavares, and Daniel Emmer­son (pro­duc­er of Calm with Hors­es). Tavares will also claim his first fea­ture direct­ing cred­it on the project, hav­ing got­ten his feet wet on the­atre and such shorts as the Sun­dance-award-win­ning Jon­ah — in which Kalu­uya starred.

The gag­gle of col­lab­o­ra­tors have put their heads togeth­er for The Kitchen, a thriller set in Lon­don cir­ca 2044, where the divi­sions of a classed soci­ety have widened to the point of a dystopia dis­plac­ing the work­ers to tem­po­rary accom­mo­da­tions on the out­side of the city. The Kitchen rep­re­sents the last sec­tion of Lon­don to be tak­en from the dug-in res­i­dents, such as 12-year-old Ben­ji (new­com­er Jeda­iah Ban­ner­man) and the old­er Izi (Kane Robin­son, of Top Boy), his unlike­ly com­pan­ion in a strug­gle to sur­vive against a state try­ing to flush them out.

The press release states that shoot­ing will com­mence lat­er this year — on loca­tion in Lon­don and, curi­ous­ly, Paris — with plans to release the film in 2023. The bul­letin also includes a state­ment from Kalu­uya: ​“In 2011, I was in my bar­ber­shop and there was a guy boast­ing about smash and grabs — kids doing mil­lion-pound heists in a minute, get­ting paid £200 to do it. I saw the poten­tial to unlock a unique sto­ry door to the inequal­i­ty, father­hood, class, joy, resilience, courage, defi­ance and care of London.”

It’s an excit­ing project, yet it’s also some­what trou­bling that Black British film­mak­ers must ven­ture beyond the nation­al film infra­struc­ture to get fund­ing and a plat­form for the kind of work they’d like to be doing. This is pre­cise­ly the kind of young, edgy voice that UK cin­e­ma wants for, and they’ve gone straight to Hol­ly­wood, or at least the stream­ing bar­bar­ians bang­ing at the industry’s gates.