The magic of Children of Blood and Bone was already in the room before the cast ever reached the stage.
At New York Comic Con 2026, the upcoming fantasy epic took over the Empire Stage for a special presentation featuring Thuso Mbedu, Damson Idris, Amandla Stenberg, Tosin Cole, Cynthia Erivo, Lashana Lynch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and director Gina Prince-Bythewood, with filmmaker Rian Johnson moderating the conversation.
Johnson opened with unusually direct praise. He had already seen the finished film and told the crowd that audiences were not prepared for how good it was. But his larger point was more revealing. For all the scale, magic, battles, kingdoms, and adventure of Children of Blood and Bone, he argued that what makes the movie work is the same thing that has always driven Prince-Bythewood’s films: character.
That became the throughline of the entire panel.
The movie may be entering the fantasy space on a massive scale, but Prince-Bythewood has approached it as something intimate first. The relationships, betrayals, family wounds, cultural memory, and emotional stakes are not supporting details around the spectacle. They are what give the spectacle meaning.
Gina Prince-Bythewood Wanted an “Intimately Epic” Fantasy
Prince-Bythewood described her vision for the film in three words: “intimately epic, grounded fantasy.”
That meant creating a world that could contain gods, creatures, magic, kingdoms, and large-scale battles without feeling disconnected from anything real. Rather than rely on a completely digital environment, the production went to South Africa, built extensive physical sets, and used real locations throughout the continent.
“I wanted this world to feel real despite the fantastical conceit of magic.”
— Gina Prince-Bythewood
Orïsha is inspired heavily by Nigeria, but Prince-Bythewood said she wanted the world to feel inclusive of the larger African diaspora. That approach gave the production permission to draw from different regions, architecture, landscapes, movement, and cultural influences while still creating a distinct fantasy nation of its own.
One of the environments shown during the presentation included a pink lake that was physically constructed rather than generated digitally. Another village was inspired by a real location in Benin. Production designer Hannah Beachler helped translate those influences into a world that could feel expansive while remaining tactile enough for the actors to inhabit.
For Prince-Bythewood, that physicality mattered. Actors were not simply performing against abstract digital environments. They were given what she called a “360 playground,” with complete spaces that allowed performance and world-building to exist together.
The African Diaspora Is Built Into the Sound of the Film
The cultural identity of Children of Blood and Bone extends beyond the visual design.
Music was part of Prince-Bythewood’s process from the beginning. She explained that she writes with playlists designed to open her emotionally to the story, and for this film, nearly the entire playlist was built around Afrobeats.
Two songs became particularly important during the writing process: Tems’ “Try Me” and Burna Boy’s “Alone.” Prince-Bythewood connected the songs so deeply to the characters that she eventually approached both artists about becoming part of the film itself.
Tems came aboard to curate the soundtrack, while Burna Boy joined as a music consultant. Terence Blanchard composed the score, incorporating African instrumentation so that the contemporary musical influences and traditional score could exist in the same world rather than fighting against one another.
The goal was not simply to place popular African artists over a fantasy movie. Prince-Bythewood wanted the music to serve as a bridge between the past and the present without breaking the world audiences are entering.
That makes the soundtrack another piece of the film’s larger cultural ambition. Orïsha is fictional, but the sounds, textures, landscapes, and traditions informing it are very real.
A Cast That Recognized Themselves in the Material
For several members of the cast, the connection to Children of Blood and Bone began before they ever stepped onto a set.
Mbedu first read Tomi Adeyemi’s novel in 2019 and connected immediately with Zélie, particularly with the character’s resilience. She saw someone repeatedly knocked down by life who continued getting back up because of the people surrounding her.
That relationship between individual strength and community became important both within the story and during production.
Erivo’s connection came through the traditional mythology surrounding the Orishas. As a Nigerian woman, she recognized something in the material that she had rarely encountered in fantasy at this scale.
She spoke about seeing mythology she knew reflected in a major production and immediately wanting to be involved in whatever form that opportunity took.
Lynch described the project in similarly personal terms. Years before production began, a friend had told her that if Children of Blood and Bone were ever adapted, she needed to find a way into it. When Prince-Bythewood eventually called, Lynch initially did not even realize it was the same story her friend had recommended years earlier.
Once she made the connection, she described becoming part of the film as feeling like one of “the chosen ones” participating in an enriching cultural moment.
That language captures something larger about the ensemble. The cast is not simply occupying a fantasy universe modeled after European medieval traditions with different faces inserted into it. They are building a world whose mythology, visual language, movement, and cultural foundation come from somewhere else entirely.
Building Warriors Through African-Inspired Movement
The action in Children of Blood and Bone was approached with the same level of specificity.
Mbedu trained with a bow staff and worked with stunt coordinator Danny Hernandez on a fighting style that blended multiple disciplines, including capoeira and African-inspired movement. She carried a portable staff while traveling so she could continue drilling choreography before production.
Training eventually became a five-day-a-week process that combined conditioning with hours of stunt work.
Idris also trained for roughly two months, developing a fighting style built around dual machetes and influences drawn from African and Asian movement traditions. He described the process as physically demanding but also communal, with the cast leaning on one another until everyone began to feel powerful together.
Stenberg emphasized that the training was not simply about learning choreography. It was where much of the cast first learned how to exist around one another.
“We are now definitely bonded for life.”
— Amandla Stenberg
Before the cameras rolled, the actors had already seen one another struggle through conditioning, flexibility, choreography, weapons training, and the vulnerability that comes with learning something new in front of strangers.
That experience became part of the relationships audiences will eventually see onscreen.
Family Is the Real Battleground
For all the discussion of magic and action, the panel kept circling back to family.
The film contains several relationships built around people who deeply love one another while carrying resentment, grief, betrayal, and competing ideas about what survival looks like.
That complexity is especially important within the royal family played by Ejiofor, Idris, and Stenberg. Johnson described their journey as almost Shakespearean, a family moving through nearly every imaginable emotion as the story tests their loyalty to one another.
Idris said Prince-Bythewood brought the actors together before production to work through histories and family dynamics that might never be explicitly shown onscreen. Those conversations allowed the actors to build memories, resentments, and patterns that their characters could carry into scenes without having to explain them.
Stenberg described the relationship as beautiful precisely because love remains present even after trust has been damaged.
“There’s something so beautiful and painful about when people love each other profoundly and are also trying to find a window of trust.”
— Amandla Stenberg
Ejiofor saw that same complexity in King Saran, a character he described as filled with trauma and rage. What he appreciated about Prince-Bythewood’s direction was that even the action remained connected to those internal journeys. The movie does not pause its characters so a fight sequence can happen. Their emotional state informs how they move, fight, and react.
That philosophy extends to Zélie and Tzain as well. Cole described their sibling relationship through the different ways grief can affect members of the same family. One person may become determined to hold everyone together while another responds through anger, hopelessness, or the need to keep moving.
The emotions may look different, but the source remains love.
Lashana Lynch Found Motherhood Inside the Role
Lynch’s connection to the material changed in an especially personal way between being cast and arriving on set.
Her character is a mother whose magic is tied closely to her family. When Lynch initially accepted the role, she was not yet a mother herself. By the time filming began, she was.
That timing changed how she approached the character.
She spoke about learning how motherhood altered her body, voice, spirituality, and understanding of the energy she brought into a scene. Rather than separating her changing personal life from the work, she allowed the experience to reshape how she understood the character.
For Lynch, the role became a kind of re-education in acting because she was returning to work as a different version of herself.
Her description speaks directly to the kind of film Prince-Bythewood appears to be making. Even in a world filled with gods and magic, the emotional foundation comes from recognizable experiences: parenthood, grief, family, identity, love, fear, and the responsibilities people inherit from one another.
The Spectacle Only Works if the People Matter
Prince-Bythewood ended the conversation by returning to the communal nature of the production.
Some locations required hours of travel followed by long walks through jungles to reach waterfalls, rock formations, and landscapes that had rarely, if ever, been used for filmmaking. The work was difficult, but she emphasized that the cast had committed to the difficulty because everyone wanted to tell this particular story.
That collective investment may be the most important thing Children of Blood and Bone showed at NYCC.
The fantasy is large. The world is beautiful. The action is physical. The cast is stacked with some of the strongest performers working today.
But Prince-Bythewood appears determined not to let scale swallow intimacy.
She recalled advice Johnson once gave her when she asked how he handled something as enormous as Star Wars: regardless of the budget or toys available, the job is still to tell a good story.
That became her compass.
The quiet moments have to feel as seismic as the battles. The action has to reveal character. The culture informing Orïsha has to feel lived in rather than ornamental. And the people at the center of this fantasy have to matter before audiences are asked to care whether their world survives.
Judging from the energy inside the Empire Stage, Children of Blood and Bone is arriving with expectations far beyond another big-screen fantasy adaptation.
For many fans, this is a chance to see African mythology, Black fantasy, and the breadth of the diaspora occupying the kind of cinematic scale the genre has too rarely afforded them.
And Prince-Bythewood is building that world from the inside out.
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I’m a dedicated aficionado of all things movies, pop culture, and entertainment. With a passion for storytelling and a love for the silver screen, I’m constantly immersed in the world of cinema, exploring new releases, classics, and hidden gems alike. As a fervent advocate for the power of film to inspire, entertain, and provoke thought, I enjoy sharing my insights, reviews, and recommendations with fellow enthusiasts.
