We got the chance to speak with award-winning filmmaker, Damien Douglas, as his film, Moors, moves into production after 18 years.
Moors is a high-stakes, mythic sword-and-sandals drama that places Black heroes at the forefront of the Moorish conquest of Sicily. Damien describes the film as “a sweeping, mythic, sword and sandals epic where Black heroes stand at the center of their own legend, not on the margins of someone else’s story.”
The film follows an eager, young warrior named Tariq in 827 A.D. as he and a tight-knit band of black soldiers are lured into war by a beguiling, exiled general looking to settle the score against the Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. To defeat the wretched Romans, Tariq and his friends must sacrifice themselves to change the face of Europe, forevermore bringing a new culture to the continent and beginning two centuries of Moorish rule in Sicily.
Damien’s original story will be directed by Roel Reiné (Halo) and written by Emmy-nominated writer Chaz Hawkins (Fallout).
Check out our Q&A with Damien:
So, Moors is 18 years in the making.
Damien: Without a doubt. It’s actually been a little longer than that. I’ve been in the film business since 2005,2006– whenever 300 came out, was the first time I thought of making it. And I was able to meet the producer of 300 Mark Canton. And I asked him about it. Of course, he talked about the digital aspects and all of the production stuff, which was cool, but then he said the story was based on something historical and he was able to bring that forward, which is why everybody got so connected to it. He said the story comes first. I said I’d love to do a black version of 300. He was like, ‘Is there a story like that?’ Yes, there is. The Moors.
I knew about the story, which is funny, since a movie called True Romance… There’s this very famous, iconic scene between Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper, where Dennis Hopper says the Sicilian people are descended from North African Moors. Sicilian people initially had blonde hair and blue eyes, but the Moors infiltrating Sicily changed the bloodline forever. That’s kind of what Dennis Hopper was saying as to why Sicilians went from blonde hair, blue eyes to brown hair, brown eyes, and olive skin. The North African Moors basically slept with all the women and changed the bloodline forever. Don’t know if that part is true or not, but I found it fascinating. And that was in the early 90s. I couldn’t get much research done on it at that time and I wasn’t thinking about being a filmmaker back then, I was just interested if the story was true. So now, fast forward. Here it is. I’m in the film business, I’m meeting this guy with this mega hit movie, and the first thing that comes to mind is that this is a Moors story. It’s the same kind of thing, but there’s never been a sword and sandal movie with people of color. You’ve never seen it… I want to tell a story that hasn’t been told. From that moment, I decided to go, ‘okay, let me figure this out.’ And it took me 18 years to figure it out.
When you say it took 18 years to figure it out, what exactly do you mean?
Damien: Okay, so you got to tell a story that’s actually going to be tangible and then you got to get someone to get behind it. Think about it, George Lucas made Red Tails, and he talked about having trouble telling this true story. This is George Lucas, someone I idolize as a filmmaker, and he had trouble with the studio making Red Tails. So imagine me, with no name, trying to figure out how I can get Moors done when people don’t know who the Moors are and don’t know what I’m talking about. And more importantly, you’re going to get pushback, because who thinks that a cast like that is going to sell anything? You’re going to get immediate pushback. So, I had to figure out how to come up with a story– I knew the story I wanted to tell, I knew how I wanted to tell it– then get the right writing team together, which took a while, because I had different people I worked with over the years, but no one really could touch what I wanted to do. I’ve had an 18 year education of making films, which is just enough to make it possible for me to now be ready to make the film I always wanted to make.
It takes a lot of dedication and a lot of drive to really stick with a project, especially one like this that’s taken 18+ years in the making. What drives your commitment to this specific story?
Damien: Well, it is a genre that doesn’t exist. I want you to think about it for a minute. If you’re a fan of films like I am, have you ever seen a sword and sandal movie with black people as the lead? You haven’t seen it. You barely have us in the cast. It’s as if we didn’t exist. And I know we existed in that time period, but no one talks about it. I go back to when I was a kid watching Jason and the Argonauts, watching Sinbad, and all the movies from that time period, movies of the Roman Empire, guys pulling swords out, going to battle, you don’t see it. Why? Because, most people will say, ‘because history only tells the stories.’ Think about Robin Hood. Think about when you see Gladiator. You know, Russell Crowe’s character may not have been real, but you know Marcus Aurelius was real. You know Commodus Caesar was real. You know the Coliseum is real. People can connect stories to real time periods. But when it came to the Moors, people acted like they did not exist. It doesn’t matter. And the Moors is not one group of people, it is multiple people. We’ve just been ignoring them.
And now you’re bringing them to the big screen.
Damien: That’s the idea. Art imitates life, does it not? But yet, this has never been done. And I look at it like Hollywood’s been around for a long time, and I’m a nobody. I’m a nobody in this town, but I hope to become someone that my family can be proud of. But at the end of the day, no one’s done what I’m talking about doing. Why is that? The world doesn’t want to see it? It’s a movie, it’s action, it’s gonna be great. It’s gonna be phenomenal. And, God willing, I get the cast I want, it’ll be the first time you’ve ever seen anything like this. Ever. My director, Roel Reiné, is phenomenal, I love him, and my partner Chaz (Hawkins) in writing, without him, there’s nothing. He’s the one who understood me. We had one meeting and he understood everything instantly. The first thing he did was watch that scene from True Romance to go back where I was in that moment, to say, ‘wow.’ And he envisioned it, and said, ‘I know where to go.’ We just started going.
Was there a similar connection with bringing Roel on?
Damien: Here’s the most amazing thing, Roel came into my office about another film he’s working on with myself and my company, and I said to him, ‘I want to talk to you about something.’ He sat down with me and said, ‘it’s a great idea. I’d like to come in and show you something.’ So now, outside of the meeting for the other movie, we had a different meeting where he came in to specifically talk to me about Moors and how he envisioned it, how he’d loved to shoot it, and he gave me this presentation as another person that was right in step with me. A guy who never knew me from a can of paint was right in step with what I wanted to do. Hands down, that’s it. That’s my guy.
I love when things fall into place perfectly like that. You mentioned casting a little bit earlier, are you still in the process of casting?
Damien: Yes, I am.
In addition to casting, what else can you tell us?
Damien: I can tell you exactly what I’m working on. Everything, literally. What’s the wardrobe gonna look like? The sound? Am I gonna have my actors speak with a dialect, or accent, or speak regular English? Where are we physically going to shoot? How are we going to do scenes where they’re at sea? There’s so many details– the swords, the battle gear, all that stuff has to be custom made. Who’s gonna be my costume person, who’s gonna make all of that stuff? How much time is it gonna take them to make it? I plan to shoot in Tunisia, Malta, and Sicily, to name a few places, right? I’m talking to production companies around the world. What’s there? What’s needed? What will I have to ship? I can go on and on, but it’s like, it’s a lot of things. I’m hands on every single aspect of it.
That’s insane.
Damien: And not to mention I have a TV series that’s coming out this year. I had a movie come out January 8, and another movie coming out next month. I have four films coming out this year. Moors is my biggest project that I’m doing this year, but I have five other movies I’m filming. I’m supposed to go to the Philippines and shoot in another week.
How are you able to balance all of this?
Damien: This is my life. I think I was born to do this. The idea is for you to find your talent and lock into it. The ability to monetize it and the money to get what you want done will find itself. That’s easy. You just have to make sure you’re locked into what you’re doing.
So with, with being as busy as you are, how do you stay focused on Moors when you have other projects that you’re working on and other deadlines that you have to hit?
Damien: I have an incredible team. I have a team of people around me that have gotten me to where I am.
Now that Moors is officially in development, why is now the perfect time to tell this story, especially during this heated political climate?
Damien: I’m glad you asked this question for many reasons, but I think this will sum it up. When I first started doing this story, one of the things that I wanted to make sure of is that my story is not a black versus white thing. Good and bad are on both sides of this story, like and the thing that’s funny about it is that when you look at the political climate that we’re in, my movie is more of a unification movie than anything you can ever imagine. And I’ll ask you, who’s the most famous Moor of all time? You know him very well. Othello. Shakespeare’s Othello. The exact title of Othello was called The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice, and when you look at Othello, he is an honorable, respectable man in that time period. This is a fiction, but how does Shakespeare think of a black man in that time period and make him reputable? He had to have seen something at that time to make him realize that. And this gave validity to what Dennis Hopper was saying in True Romance. It must be true. This is what Shakespeare had to have seen for this man to be so reputable. And as I looked into that time period, I found out that the Moors’ rule of Sicily is the only time Christians, Jews and Muslims lived in peace, lived in harmony. They were in harmony at that time period. And I intend to show how that happens.
Is there anything that we didn’t touch on that you would like to add?
Damien: I simply just want to say that, as a filmmaker, I’m a fan of this business. I’m a fan of everybody that I work with, the films that I’ve made, the awards that I’ve won. I’m a fan of everyone because I learned early on that if you don’t recognize a star as a star, because you’re so jaded by being next to stars, that you need to get out of this business. I am a fan of everyone, directors, writers, producers. I love what we all do, and I think that talent, that thing that we bring to life– like I said earlier, art imitates life, and to me, through art, we’ll solve all the other problems if you can actually make the art. You’re not trying to take a political position, you’re not trying to take a religious position, you’re not trying to dictate a lecture to anyone, you’re trying to entertain. That’s what this is about. If you’re entertaining and you’re talking about something that touches the heart, because it’s authentic, people who get the message. Art imitates life.
After Moors, which is expected to begin filming this fall, Damien is planning a television series to follow saying that there are many different stories to come.