OH NOLLYWOOD! -THE SAD TALE OF THE COLLAPSE OF THE NIGERIAN MOVIE INDUSTRY
When the South Africans came into Nigeria with MultiChoice, they came with the same pretext with which the colonial masters came centuries ago.
Bible in one hand, canon in the other.
Hope and destruction in their lair.
Nollywood had grown to exponential heights, earning the country attention and improving her reputation. It held a bright candle of hope for everyone.
Screenwriters would have a platform large enough to accomodate everyone.
Many people got plucked out from obscurity, and were established in stardom.
Superstars were born.
The producers and directors were always busy. Film was goldmine.
"Living in Bondage" had set the pace.
Shot with just #180,000 and it doubtedly raked in about #40 million.
Then MultiChoice arrived.
Their soap opera came on air - Tinsel.
Tinsel was the biggest thing on TV then.
All of us dreamt of Tinsel and the klieglights.
Tinsel audition was always like a carnival.
Thousands of people from different parts of the country would gather at Philips Building, Ojota to take a shot at stardom and money.
The pay was the bait.
#10,000 - #15,000 per scene for bit actors.
#250,000 per episode for the main casts.
Oops!
I remember the first audition I ever attended in my life was Tinsel audition.
With my best friend then, Emmanuel Luke, who is now a Presenter on Galaxy TV.
And few days later, a text entered my phone from MNET that I had passed Tinsel audition.
My heart exploded into a million splinters.
I screamed myself hoarse.
Called all my friends on my list.
"Guys, I am going to Tinsel."
But then I was so naive then. During photoshoot, I wore sunshades. I didn't know that was outright disqualification.
And in the end I did not make it to Tinsel again because my photo was screened out. Because the casting directors could not see my eyes clearly in the photo during their photo screening.
And that's how my love for sunshades ruined my affair with Tinsel.
MultiChoice was buying old Nigerian films at fair rates and showing them on African Magic.
All the producers were running back to their archives to get their old films and sell to them.
They were paid in dollars.
Life was good.
They could not interprete the gloomy prognostication.
As time went on, MultiChoice became monsters.
They built a colonial fame.
They were now the ones calling the narratives, and drawing the plan for Nigeria's movie industry.
Because film was no more selling in the open market.
Alaba.
Idumota.
Onitsha.
All the markets sank into moribund state.
Because nobody was now buying films.
Why should they buy when Nigerian movies were showing 24hours on African Magic?
When MultiChoice had safely taken over the market, there was a big pay cut.
Film sales.
And even Tinsel.
Many of the casts were saddened, but there was no legal weapon with which to fight.
MultiChoice was now the master.
Nollywood producers became the slaves.
Always crawling to their master for terms and conditions.
Because apart from cinemas, MultiChoice is the only hope of the present day Nollywood producer.
Because Nigerian films are no more selling in the open market.
The days of CD and DVD are long gone.
The good old days.
The days of film boom.
MultiChoice terms and conditions became stiffer.
They now tell them the kind of stars they want them to feature in their films before they buy.
The film must be a recent film, not dated far beyond three years.
The producer runs to location, spends millions on one film, brings the film to MultiChoice, and MultiChoice buys it for #500,000 or less.
The producer runs a loss, and starts thinking of how to make his money back. He starts hiding from the people he borrowed money to make the film. He sinks into depression, while his film is shown everyday on African Magic, and enriching the pockets of the South Africans.
Mediocrity became king.
The producers are no more willing to spend money on films, because they don't know how they would make their money back.
They're now finding cheap ways of doing everything.
Cheap scripts.
Cheap casts.
Cheap cameras.
Cheap directors.
Cheap D.O.P.
Cheap editors.
Cheap this.
Cheap that.
Everything cheap cheap.
And in the end what they churn out as films is trash that people don't even want to turn and look. And now they are crying that MultiChoice should leave Nigeria, because they ruined Nollywood.
They suddenly remember Bollywood.
And how the Indians have hermetically secured their industry against destructive influences. But when they were eating the forbidden fruit that MultiChoice was offering them, they didn't know that it would finally lead to doom.
With their own hands they sold out their industry. They participated actively in the collapse of their own empire.
This is quite interesting. Never knew how much harm multichoice had done to our movie industry. Its sad to say that Nigerians like doing things the easiest way and we end up paying dearly for it. So sad
It's a very sad narrative dear
This is compelling and interesting. I agree with your assertions. However, multichoice alone is not to blame, Nigeria movie industry have her own share of the blame. Nollywood produce many movies per year but with few cinemas and screens in the country screen them. This is a very big challenge, i don't know if they see it as one.
One of the ways hollywood and bollywood make so much profit and success with their movies is because of the availability of cinemas all over their country and all over the world to screen them. Whereas in Nigeria, only few states can booast of cinemas, in fact , the few states with cinemas can hardly boast of up to 5(Lagos, and Abuja being an exception). Hollywood has market in America and all over the world especially asia countries where they amass so much profit. Although nollywood knows that their main market is nigeria, yet, they are not investing enough to make the market profitable. Imagine someone in Ekiti state, Osun state, and some other state will never get to see some of the latest Nollywood movies screened at the cinemas, why? No cinemas in those states. Imagine yhe additional amount those movies would have amassed in those states.
Another sad part to this story is that the few available cinemas hardly screen Nigeria movies beyond one week and Nigerians hardly see Nigeria movies if it's not romance or comedy. This is why movies like wedding party and 10 days to sun city made so much money, whereas 93 days, a compelling movie about how the medical team in Lagos were able to curb the ebola infection in nigeria could barely make the amount spent on production. It's really sad, filmmakers would be running away from making such movies and mediocre comedies and romance movies will keep gracing our cinemas. Little wonder most of the recent movies in our cinemas are below par comedies and rom-comedy. In fact some of the nollywood movies we screen at our cinemas ought to be straight to dvd movies.
So, I don't blame the filmakers that decided to sell their movies to multichoice, afterall, they will get a token which some of them may not be able to get if they stick to their dvd sales.
More cinemas are needed for nollywood to blossom.