Malala Yousafzai’s production banner unveils first slate with Apple TV+

Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, who inked a programming agreement with Apple TV+ last year, has unveiled the first line-up of film and TV projects with the streamer, backed by her banner Extracurricular.

According to entertainment website Variety, the deal involves dramas, comedies, documentaries, animation and children’s series and will see the Pakistani activist team up with Oscar winner Adam McKay’s production house on a feature film.

The film, titled “Disorientation”, with McKay’s Hyperobject Industries is an adaptation of Elaine Hsieh Chou’s acclaimed book of the same name. Billed as a “sharp-edged, celebrated satire”, the story centres on a college student’s revealing dissertation on a young poet. The makers are yet to rope in a director for the project.

The team at Extracurricular, Yousafzai said, aims to bring to the table “the voices of women of colour, and debut writers and Muslim directors and writers”.

“I hope we can have a wide range of perspectives and that we challenge some of the stereotypes we hold in our societies.

“And I also hope that the content is entertaining, and that people fall in love with the characters and have the best time together,” she added.

Extracurricular will also bring to screen a scripted series based on Asha Lemmie’s coming-of-age novel “Fifty Words for Rain”, about a woman’s search for acceptance in post-World War II Japan.

Erika Kennair, president of production at Extracurricular, said new talent will be cast in the both projects.

“Just by the nature of it, the lead of ’50 Words for Rain’ is a half-Black half-Japanese woman. And unless Naomi Osaka (tennis star) wants to start acting, we’re going to have to discover that woman, which is really exciting,” added Kennair, former Berlanti Productions executive and “The Flight Attendant” producer.

A feature documentary, revolving around South Korea’s matriarchal Haenyeo society of elderly fisherwomen, is currently in production with A24 attached as the studio.

Extracurricular is also looking forward to telling a fictionalised or unscripted account of Yousafzai and her family’s experience with the Taliban.

Yousafzai, an activist for girls education, miraculously survived a bullet to the head from the militant Taliban in October 2012.