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January 10, 2018: Nollywood actress and the CEO of Scene One Productions, Funke Akindele Bello has finally crossed boundaries from Nollywood to Hollywood!

The Jenifa’s diary star has been casted to play the character of Dora Milaje one of the Black Panther’s guard in Avengers Infinity war a Hollywood fiction set to be released in 2018.

The Nollywood Icon has produced over a dozen movies herself and acted in more than a hundred in the Nollywood scene but this is her first international break.

The movie, a fantasy and science fiction features several top Hollywood sensations and is set to be released in April 2018.

Funke Akindele is playing alongside Hollywood stars like: Bradley Cooper, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Tom Hiddleston, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Jeremy Renner, Chris Pratt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Vin Diesel, Scarlett Johansson, Chadwick Boseman, Danai Gurira, Paul Rudd and Don Cheadle.

Funke Akindele, One of Nollywood’s biggest stars has a role in Marvel’s new Avengers blockbuster

When Marvel’s next Avengers movie is released in May, 2018, Nollywood fans will have an extra reason to get excited about the franchise blockbuster. Funke Akindele, one of the biggest stars in Nigeria’s Nollywood movie industry, has been listed among the full cast of the Avengers: Infinity War on IMDb, the movie database website owned by Amazon. Akindele is currently listed to play a role as a member of Dora Milaje, Wakanda’s all-female special forces unit from the Black Panther comics. Avengers: Infinity War is scheduled for release on May 4, 2018. A sequel is planned for May 3, 2019.

Right now it seems likely Akindele will make the final cut of the movie. Even if it ends up being a minor role relative to her Nollywood superstar status it would still be a major breakthrough for the homegrown movie industry which has blossomed rapidly in recent years.

Avengers 4 is a climax of sorts after a decade of build-up in Marvel’s earlier movies and will be released nearly 10 years to the day when Iron Man, the first movie in Marvel’s cinematic Avengers universe, debuted. It will see several superheroes from different franchises which are part of the cinematic universe appear together in a movie for the first time. As such, Akindele will star alongside some of Hollywood’s biggest names including Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Zoe Saldana and Chris Pratt.

Lagos-born Akindele will not be the first Avengers connection to Africa’s largest city. In 2016’s Captain America Civil War, there was a prominent fight scene set in the chaos of Lagos. And there was some bemusement by Nigerians with the American pronunciation of Lagos as “Lah-gos”.

Akindele certainly knows something about being part of a popular and successful franchise. In 2008, she starred in Jenifa, a comedy about a young uneducated lady living in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. It turned out to be a massive hit and she snagged the Africa Movie Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance. A sequel followed in 2012 and, in 2014, Jenifa’s Diary, a spin-off TV series debuted as well.

Congratulations to our own Jenifa on this big break!