Following a yesterday article GhanaCelebrities.Com picked for publication from Razz Newspaper titled ‘Idris Elba Snubs FIPAG & Ghana Actors Guild Making Them UPSET’, I received an email from Danny Damah, one of the two founders of Deal Real Productions—the production company responsible for “Beasts of No Nation” which brought Hollywood actor-Idris Elba to Ghana for a recent shoot.
According to Danny Damah who also introduced himself as being a co-producer of the movie, a link to the article published on GhanaCelebrities.Com was sent to him, drawing his attention to a supposed SNUB and failure to meet the executives of both FIPAG and Ghana Actors Guild, so he decided to swiftly make contact, apologise and straighten things.
In the email to GhanaCelebritiess.Com, Danny Damah wrote “ A link was just sent to us on your article about ‘Idris Elba snubbing’ the film Producers Association of Ghana and the Actors Guild. We would like to clarify and subsequently apologize to FIPAG and GAG. Idris Elba is simply a hired Ghanaian actor on this project and only arrived in Ghana when the movie was midway to play his role and leave. He has no knowledge of the production logistics or permitting process and rather being Ghanaian, he is the main reason why the movie is shooting in Ghana. We would like to apologize to FIPAG and GAG as we arranged all the permitting.
We would have loved to engage the services of the associations very earlier on in the process, since this project has been a massive undertaking and would have required industry organizations to help hire the over 5500 people directly or indirectly associated with the film. However until I saw your article today, I have never heard of either of these associations and they were not recommended to us by any of the industry veterans, vendor, agencies or government organizations working on the film”.