A film industry that is producing more films than Hollywood is based in Nigeria and goes by the nickname “Nollywood,” reports Fortune online. India’s Bollywood still has more volume than both, but for an industry that began in 1992 with a straight-to-video movie, Nollywood’s growth is remarkable, says Fortune.
Gifty Boateng, a BYUH alumna from Ghana who graduated in 2012 in ICS communications with a peacebuilding certificate, said she grew up on Nollywood. “I like Nollywood movies. I am more drawn to them because I am West African, and I understand the humor in those movies. And some of them have great story lines.”
Boateng said she is living in Utah preparing for grad school.
Nollywood is a $3.3 billion business that produced 1,844 movies in 2013, according to Nigerian government data released in 2014. In most films, the actors speak English. Fortune online reported, “Earlier this year, Nollywood Producer Kunle Afolyan reached an exclusive Netflix distribution arrangement for his latest film, “October 1.” This adds to the 10 Nollywood-related titles already on Netflix and the U.S. media company’s recent $12 million movie rights purchase of Nigerian novel “Beasts of No Nation,” to star Idris Elba.”
Boateng said some of her favorite films she would recommend are “Iyore,” and “30 Days in Atlanta,” which is she said “more on the comedy side.” Two more films she likes are collaborations between Nigeria, Ghana and the United States called “Ties that Bind” and “Sinking Sands.”
Fortune writes, “Critics note that while Nollywood has volume, it lacks production value, and African actors have yet to breakout globally. ‘The truth is key players in the global movie industry still have little idea what Nollywood is about,’ said Nigerian producer Afolayan. ‘The volume won’t matter until we can connect the art to the money with better content and profits.’”
Beibei Kuo, a BYUH alumna from Taiwan who graduated in ICS communication in 2010, is living in Ghana, which is where she got her first taste of Nollywood. She said, “It’s quite exposed and I didn’t enjoy it because the scenario was quite predictable and exaggerated.”
To people who have had an unfavorable experience with Nollywood, Boateng said viewers must “be more open minded about them. They are not Hollywood movies and so you cannot compare them to Hollywood movies. They are uniquely Nollywood. There have been some Hollywood collaborations on Nollywood movies, but overall, they are more African than they are American.
Of course, there are some of those movies that do a horrible job representing the continent, but there are also ones that do a terrific job.
”Very little of the $3.3 billion made from the movies reaches the producers’ hands. In fact, less than 1 percent of the money made came from official ticket sales and royalties. Pirated versions are where all the money is, says Fortune.
“The revenue is already there, it’s just scattered. If stakeholders can invest in Nollywood and make back profits, it will lead to larger budgets and better quality content,” said Jason Njoku.
Njoku is digitizing Nigerian-made movies in such a way the people who made them can actually make a profit. Njoku was raised in the United Kingdom by his Nigerian parents and moved to Nigeria to start his company iROKO, which has a YouTube channel, reported TechCrunch.
“Last month his YouTube channel had 1.1 million uniques, 8 million streams, and is on pace to do more than $1 million in revenues this year from YouTube ads. Those numbers are massive for a Nigerian-based Web company, particularly in such a short time. Facebook has one of the largest user-bases here, feeling ubiquitous in the city. And yet it has less than 3 million users,” reported Techcrunch.com.
Njoku digitizes movies legally by speaking directly to the producers, buying the online rights to their movies, and writing them checks from the revenue made online.