PARTNERS
Production partners who want to build a 100-episode Kenyan original on a standing farm studio.
START ON WHATSAPP →OR SEE /PARTNER →// ORIGINALS — MITATINI
ORIGINAL DRAMA SERIES — IN DEVELOPMENT
Two families. One shamba. Thirty acres of secrets.
When a dead schoolteacher's foundation grants a 30-acre Machakos farm to a collective of young filmmakers, the Nairobi family that sold it generations ago comes back to take it — and the collective's 19-year-old director falls for the nephew sent to destroy her. Days of Our Lives heart, Bold & the Beautiful stakes, Mexican telenovela twists — replanted in red soil off Kangundo Road, past Malaa market, where tarmac gives up and murram begins.
Production has not yet begun. This is the development bible — 100 episodes fully outlined, cast in concept, locations standing on our estate.
// THE DEVELOPMENT LOG
Mitatini is an original Boondocks Lab drama currently in story and pre-production development. Every step below is the real status — nothing claimed that hasn't happened.
01 ✓
CONCEPT
COMPLETE
02 ✓
STORY WORLD
COMPLETE
03 ✓
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
COMPLETE
04
SCRIPTS IN DEVELOPMENT
CURRENT STAGE
05
PRE-PRODUCTION
UPCOMING
06
PRODUCTION
UPCOMING
CONCEPT ART — DEVELOPMENT FRAME
FRAME 01 — THE VERANDA, DAWN
CONCEPT ART — DEVELOPMENT FRAME
FRAME 02 — THE GATE & DIRT ROAD, DUSK
CONCEPT ART — DEVELOPMENT FRAME
FRAME 03 — THE FISH POND, GOLDEN HOUR
// SEEKING
Production hasn't begun — which means this is the opportunity. The development bible is complete; the right partners decide what happens next.
Production partners who want to build a 100-episode Kenyan original on a standing farm studio.
START ON WHATSAPP →OR SEE /PARTNER →Channels and platforms looking for a daily 10-minute drama machine with 5 shorts per episode.
START ON WHATSAPP →Brands that want to live inside the story — the kiosk, the boda, the hall — for 100 episodes.
START ON WHATSAPP →Backers who see what 100 outlined episodes on owned land, with a film school attached, can become.
START ON WHATSAPP →OR SEE /PARTNER →Actors and crew — the community is the show. Learn the craft, then step into the frame.
START ON WHATSAPP →FILM SCHOOL →JOIN THE CREW →// THE WORLD
A fictional estate on a real farm — to be shot where it's set, with the community it's about.
THE TITLE
Plot 47 — nicknamed Mitatini, because the 1996 title carries three names. The farmer drowned in the fish pond. The foreman sold land that wasn't all his. The schoolteacher bought it back, founded a foundation, and left it to "the youth of Malaa." Three names. Three claims. One shamba.
THE MBATHAS
Mwaitu Mbatha and her granddaughter Zee — a matriarch with a thermos flask and a verdict for every occasion, and a 19-year-old director who just inherited a film studio made of maize rows, goats and golden hour. When the Mwati Foundation grants the estate to their collective, the cameras come home.
THE KILONZOS
Eliud Kilonzo sold Plot 47 in 2001 and built a Nairobi agri-supply business on the proceeds. His son Dennis now runs it — badly, and in debt — and a buried clause in a dead teacher's will says the land could come back. So Nairobi sends a nephew to the gate, wearing clean shoes that hate the murram.
the estate is real, the story is fiction, and the ghost on the title — teresia mwati, the schoolteacher — watches over all of it. we cry at the pond and laugh at the kiosk in the same episode.
// THE CHARACTERS — THE SIX
Six principals, zero free electrons. Deep secrets stay unprinted — the show earns them one episode at a time.
63 · THE MATRIARCH
Wants to die on her land with the past buried — but the grant she quietly engineered is digging it all up.
She saw what happened at the pond in 1997. The rest is a secret we won't print here.
Owns: THE VERANDA. Nothing is decided until she has heard it there.
19 · ROMANTIC LEAD · THE COLLECTIVE'S DIRECTOR
Wants to prove a farm girl can make cinema — against no money, self-doubt, and the Kilonzo claim.
There is a truth about her blood that even she doesn't know yet. We won't print it here either.
Owns: THE SHAMBA & FISH POND — her set, her church, her fear. She has never once filmed the water.
23 · ROMANTIC LEAD · THE NEPHEW SENT TO SPY
Wants to belong somewhere — Nairobi chewed him up, the farm fits him — but he arrived as a weapon in his uncle's hand.
His "soil audit" reports are being rewritten before they reach the Foundation. And he has been quietly fixing the estate's borehole pump at night.
Owns: THE GATE & DIRT ROAD. He arrives there, he is cast out there, he chooses his side there.
46 · THE VILLAIN
Wants to void the grant, trigger the will's reversion clause and sell Plot 47 to the "Malaa Heights" developer — because his daughter needs treatment he cannot afford.
He knows things about the 2001 sale that we won't print here — and he has been paying for someone's silence for years.
Owns: THE HALL. He bankrolls its renovation to buy the community's goodwill, one iron sheet at a time.
24 · COMIC RELIEF · BODA RIDER · THE ESTATE'S UNOFFICIAL INTERNET
Wants to own his own boda outright — but the rent-to-own loan is held by an associate of Dennis, and the payments are information.
Even the clown has a knife. Who he sells gate gossip to is a secret we won't print here.
Owns: THE GATE, boda-stage end — one guard of the road's truth, selling it by the envelope.
21 · KIOSK OWNER · M-PESA AGENT · ZEE'S BEST FRIEND
Wants out of the junction and onto the internet — but the kiosk is her mother's debt and her only stage.
She applied to the collective before E001. What the rejection turns her into, we won't print here.
Owns: THE KIOSK — "M-PESA SHARON," till number taped inside the counter, camera always ready.
// THE FIVE SETS
Every set is a real corner of the estate — and every set doubles as an Academy classroom.
L1
HOMESTEAD
The court of the matriarch. Tea is served, verdicts are issued, nobody lies successfully here. Where family business happens.
WHAT IT TEACHES
Coverage and dialogue discipline — two-handers, shot/reverse-shot, eyelines, the 180-degree rule. The most filmed location; students master it first because the walls forgive.
L2
ESTATE ENTRANCE + BODA STAGE
Arrivals, departures, ambushes, eavesdropping. Every stranger enters the story through this gate; every cliffhanger car, boda or excavator is first seen here.
WHAT IT TEACHES
Movement — tracking shots, walk-and-talks, vehicle work, and later stunt-adjacent beats like the boda go-slow and the repossession chase on foot.
L3
"M-PESA SHARON," AT THE JUNCTION
The rumor engine and exposition laundromat. If the audience needs to know something, somebody buys airtime and it comes out. Also the show's phone hub — livestreams, M-Pesa messages, WhatsApp voice notes.
WHAT IT TEACHES
Production design on zero budget, single-room blocking with 3+ bodies, and sound — a tin kiosk is a reflective nightmare, which is exactly why students record clean dialogue there until they can.
L4
THE WORKING LAND
Work, courtship, and the buried past. The pond is the estate's conscience — Harrison died there, the title tin was kept there, the finale's standoff happens there. Golden hour lives here.
WHAT IT TEACHES
Natural-light cinematography, weather and continuity discipline, day-for-dusk scheduling, and shooting near water safely. Later: blocking people against heavy machines.
L5
CHURCH SUNDAYS, COMMUNITY HALL WEEKDAYS
Ceremony. Fundraisers, funerals, the engagement party, the wedding, the graduation screening. Every interrupted ceremony in the show is interrupted here — and the most public space is secretly the villain's stage.
WHAT IT TEACHES
Multi-camera event coverage, crowd direction, live sound with a PA, and the sacred art of the reset — getting 40 extras back to position one.
// THE PRODUCTION MODEL — EPISODE ANATOMY
Every episode is five beats of ~2 minutes, and every beat is shot to stand alone as a vertical short — clean geography, self-contained question, cliffhanger exit. The episode is the five shorts stitched; the shorts are not an edit, they are the design.
| BEAT | TIME | NAME | JOB | EXIT RULE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0:00–2:00 | THE COLD KNIFE | Open mid-conflict. First 5 seconds: a face + stakes. Recap only through what people do, never title cards. | A question lands that someone refuses to answer. |
| 2 | 2:00–4:00 | THE ERRAND | Somebody is sent somewhere — the boda, the road, the kiosk. Comic relief may live here. Information travels. | The errand is interrupted or intercepted. |
| 3 | 4:00–6:00 | THE SECRET | The episode's information changes hands — overheard, recorded, misdirected. The mid-episode turn. | The wrong person learns the right thing. |
| 4 | 6:00–8:00 | THE CONFRONTATION | Two people, one location, one thing both want. Phones down — eye contact only. | Someone says the unsayable, or almost does. |
| 5 | 8:00–10:00 | THE DOOR | A door, gate, coffin, envelope or phone opens or closes. The episode's big cliffhanger. | Last 10 seconds: silent, or one word. |
every beat exits on a question or a reversal — never on resolution. each vertical short will get its own title, written like a tiktok caption, and publish the same day as the full episode: "E001 · 3/5 — ALIKATAA BILA KUJUA". binge order stays discoverable; the comment section stays the second writers' room.
// WORKED EXAMPLE
BEAT 1 — THE COLD KNIFE · The Veranda, dawn · SHORT: "MAMA ANACHOMA NINI?"
Mwaitu burns papers in a sufuria at first light. Zee bursts in waving a printed letter: the collective won the grant. Over Zee's celebration, we stay on the fire — a charred fragment refuses to burn.
BEAT 2 — THE ERRAND · Gate & dirt road, morning · SHORT: "PRADO KWA STAGE"
Wire finds a clean Prado with Nairobi plates at the stage. The driver lowers the window: "Who lives on Plot 47?" Wire takes the man's money to answer — and the camera holds on him taking it.
BEAT 3 — THE SECRET · M-Pesa Sharon's kiosk · SHORT: "ALIKATAA BILA KUJUA"
A dusty stranger — Tito — buys airtime and asks careful questions about the farm. His phone rings; the screen reads "Uncle D"; he declines the call without checking who's watching.
BEAT 4 — THE CONFRONTATION · Shamba & fish pond, golden hour · SHORT: "MAJI HAYASEMI"
Zee films the estate, voiceover glowing. Mwaitu appears and forbids filming the pond — flat, final. "Why, Nyanya?" — "Because it doesn't forgive."
BEAT 5 — THE DOOR · The veranda into the gate, dusk · SHORT: "NIMEOINGIA"
The collective toasts with sodas. At the gate, unseen, Tito watches the lights and types: "I'm in." Across the yard, Mwaitu watches him — holding the burnt fragment we still cannot read. Silence. Cut to black.
> the letter's line — "keep what was almost lost" — is mwaitu's sentence. e100 replays this veranda shot from a wider angle: she was in the corner of frame the whole time.
// THE STORY — THE 100-EPISODE GUIDE
Every movement closes on a cliffhanger and carries an Academy craft module — the telenovela is the film school's demo reel with a plot.
The grant letter lands, the collective arrives, and a stranger called Tito walks through the gate claiming to be "just an agronomist." We meet all six principals and all five locations. Dennis, in Nairobi, learns the land his father sold has been given away to farm kids — and that a buried clause could give it back. Mwaitu, who quietly engineered all of it, realizes she cannot control what she has started.
Tito stays to "finish his audit," which means staying near Zee. The romance builds in work clothes — soil, water, camera lessons — while Dennis grows impatient with reports that keep finding nothing wrong. Wire starts feeding him gate gossip, badly and guiltily. The movement ends the moment Zee discovers what the audit really is.
The romance survives the truth about the audit — barely — but Malaa now knows everything, because the kiosk knows everything. Dennis switches tactics: if the land won't come quietly, the community must turn against the collective. Rumor becomes the villain's first real weapon, and the kiosk becomes the battlefield it was always built to be.
Dennis moves against the matriarch directly: money first, permits second, memory last. The movement runs on flashback — 1996's ballot, 1997's pond — as the past starts answering back. Tito learns his uncle has been rewriting his work; Zee learns her grandmother has been editing her own history. It ends with the matriarch on the floor of the hall.
Mwaitu survives, the love finally lands — and then Nairobi arrives in heels. Dennis counters the romance with a weaponized engagement: Tito, promised on paper to the developer's daughter. The first great interrupted ceremony of the series plays at the hall, and the ex-chief's loose tongue opens the season's darkest door: Zee and Tito might be blood.
The cousin-horror movement: if Zee's father was a Kilonzo, the love is forbidden twice over. The investigation runs through hospital registers, an old midwife's memory, and the collective's decision to keep filming while its director falls apart. Nobody gets a straight answer — the past is being paid to stay quiet. It ends with the one living witness vanishing before she can speak.
Dennis's endgame accelerates: surveyors on the land, an eviction map that swallows the whole junction, and a money offer designed to split the collective. Then the ex-chief dies, and his funeral becomes the series' second great ceremony — the classic funeral reading, with a confession letter everyone wants and one boda rider willing to bleed for.
Who was Teresia Mwati — and why does her Foundation executor have her eyes? The nurse's Bible gives up its 2005 secret, the swap is confirmed, and Zee faces the cruelest question of the series: if she's not her grandmother's blood, whose is she? Dennis realizes the heir he's been hunting is the girl he's been fighting. The movement ends with a machine at the pond and an old woman sitting in front of it.
The standoff goes national. The community — boda riders, market women, the pastor, even the county official — picks its side in the open, while Dennis's own daughter refuses his money and his own nephew hands the evidence to the executor. Zee and Tito's wedding doubles as a legal knot the villain can't untie. The series' third interrupted ceremony delivers the twist the whole season was built for.
Everything lands. The reversion clause makes Zee the owner; Zee makes the land everyone's. Dennis confesses where he once bought applause. The pond gives up its last truth — cowardice, not murder — which is the only version that lets the living forgive the dead. Mwaitu finishes her story by the water, and the show ends exactly where it began: the gate, a stranger, a camera.
// THE PEOPLE — GUEST SLOTS & FILM-SCHOOL TIE-IN
Plot 47 was granted to a community collective — so in-story, the hall runs open workshop days, open auditions and open calls. In production reality: every guest role is a real casting call for estate students, Mitatini/Malaa/Mutalia youth, and fans who win slots through the show's social channels.
The hall's Sunday tenant; preaches in parables that accidentally recap the episode.
The county official — the face of "the system," humanized, one envelope at a time.
Ring light and strong opinions; arrives for "two days" and keeps returning.
2–3 rotating market mamas — a Greek chorus at the kiosk that knows everything first and forgives nothing cheaply.
Keeper of the 1996 ballot memory. A guest role with a full arc — and two envelopes.
Retired mission-hospital midwife near Mutalia; the only person alive who knows which baby cried first in 2005.
The Foundation executor; arrives in Movement 8 with a locked briefcase and her mother's eyes.
Karimi, Jonte, Baraka — Zee's fellow filmmakers, cast from real Academy students.
Standard episodes carry 1–2 guest roles; kiosk and market days carry 2–3; event episodes — fundraisers, funerals, the wedding — carry 3+ with lines and unlimited walk-ons. Event days are the community's red-carpet days.
// AROUND THE ESTATE
// QUESTIONS FROM THE COMMENTS
Subscribe now and be there when thirty acres of secrets start giving themselves up — or send one WhatsApp message and step into the frame yourself.
KEYWORD: MITATINI