Nia DaCosta and Mahershala Ali are making a movie together. The film is called Driver. Ali will play a hardened Nigerian smuggler who, after losing everything, accepts one last job transporting migrants across Africa while fleeing ruthless enemies. DaCosta is set to direct.
Production is targeting a January 2027 start in Spain and Morocco, and the project is being independently financed without studio involvement, according to World of Reel.
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DaCosta arrives at Driver in the middle of one of the strongest stretches of her career. After directing The Marvels and absorbing criticism that was disproportionate to the film’s actual failures, she spent the time since making exactly the films she wanted to make.
In the last five months alone, she has directed two well-received features: Hedda, her sharp contemporary adaptation of the Ibsen classic, and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, the second installment in Danny Boyle’s zombie franchise.
Driver would be her sixth feature. She has also recently signed on to direct the first two episodes of Amazon Prime’s upcoming Sex Criminals series.
Mahershala Ali is a two-time Academy Award winner, Best Supporting Actor for Moonlight in 2017 and Green Book in 2019, and one of the most technically precise performers of his generation. A Nigerian smuggler who has lost everything and takes one final desperate job across a continent while being hunted is exactly the kind of role that calls for that particular quality.
The African setting matters too. A thriller set across Africa, directed by a Black woman, starring a two-time Oscar winner playing a Nigerian man is a different kind of film than Hollywood has typically green-lit. The independent financing suggests DaCosta and her producers understood they were not going to get this made by asking for permission.
Driver targets a January 2027 production start. No distributor has been announced yet.
