Glover helping to create Arab videogame

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, May 14 (UPI) -- The United Arab Emirates-based Colorblind Entertainment announced Wednesday that U.S. film star Danny Glover is joining its board of directors.

Colorblind said Glover, who co-starred in the "Lethal Weapon" buddy-cop action flicks, will play an integral role in the future development of "Sharq Warriors," a videogame franchise featuring "Sami," the first modern Arab action hero.

"My production company Louverture is venturing into 3-D animation films as well as other new media and 'Sami' and 'Sharq Warriors' are a perfect fit for us," Glover said in a statement. "I am also excited to be involved in creating heroes for other regions like South Asia and Africa that have been ignored or handled insensitively by the existing game developers."

Colourblind said Riz Khan, a show host at Al Jazeera English and former journalist with the BBC and CNN, is also working on the project.

"Many existing games feature Western soldiers shooting Arabs, Afghans and other ethnic 'enemies,' as well as bad guys who are consistently of African descent, Latino, Arab or Muslim in general," Khan noted. "We think that only reinforces negative stereotypes. We're introducing different types of heroes and 'Sami' is the first of them but he fights corruption, not people of another race."