During a meeting a few years ago, the Head of Drama of a major European multi-TV platform and streamer declared: “Nollywood cannot produce premium content.”
Ever the self-elected defender of Nollywood, I counter-declared: “But no one has really given Nollywood premium money, so where’s the premium content going to come from?”.
We can debate what exactly qualifies as “premium content” and whether European and American premium content should be measured side by side with African premium content possibilities, seeing the massive difference in budgets available to producers in the different places.
However, my attempt at a comeback contained a few fallacies that I should swiftly correct.
For a little over a decade, Nollywood has attracted decent foreign funding. I have had the pleasure of producing two seasons of the global young-adult behavioural change drama series, MTV Shuga. While one can argue that the budgets were much smaller when compared to similar projects in, say, America or England, it was significant by Nigerian standards.
MTV Shuga veteran Emmanuel Kalu Uduma (who brought PinPoint Media and I on to the project) and I were able to produce those seasons at a premium level, with the second one still regarded as the reference point for young-adult TV shows in Nigeria. It won significant awards here and globally, including four awards at the World Television Festival.
The coming of Netflix and Amazon also brought better funding that allowed filmmakers to take bigger risks and build infrastructure. Recent events regarding the alleged pullback from Nigerian content by Netflix and Prime Video & and Amazon MGM Studios have left some filmmakers and investors concerned about the future of the industry.
Where many see a downturn, I see a massive opportunity for the industry to grow in a different direction, with long-term benefits that can situate us in a place where future engagements with the streamers will be way more beneficial for them and us.
This may sound like wishful thinking, but please let me explain.
Over the past year, I have worked closely with a Lagos-based investment firm in order to raise capital for my forthcoming feature film (yes, it’s happening, and it’s major!). In a few weeks, we will commence principal photography.
In the past few years, this firm, and others like it, have been able to raise significant funding from institutions and high-network individuals for many of the more successful film projects in Nigeria, allowing filmmakers to concentrate on actually making the film.
This is what they are doing with me as I prepare to deliver the most important project of my career so far. If we are going to make premium content, sustainably, we are going to need partners across the board who are in it for profit, not just for the love of film. We all mostly see this as entertainment, and at times, imagine it is less serious than technology or agriculture or banking.
Once we can all agree that this is serious business with huge commercial opportunities, then all concerned parties would put their best foot forward and approach filmmaking in the same manner they would approach other serious business endeavours: a business opportunity from which the potential exists for maximum value derivation.
Funding filmmaking through institutionalised channels will demand from filmmakers what many previous (often individual or unstructured) funders have not demanded. These institutions are here to make a profit off their investment. They will demand levels of diligence, efficiency, and access that many creatives are not used to. They will demand accountability the likes of which many in the industry will find uncomfortable. They will also demand corporate structural adjustments that the creative mind often finds challenging.
These demands may seem tough at first glance, but if the industry is going to grow sustainably, these kinds of adjustments have to be made because the upsides far outweigh initial inconveniences.
How does this direction benefit Nollywood in the long run?
For one, it will mean that budgets are more realistic and fit into a bigger plan beyond what the filmmaker seeks to earn on the front end of the project. Loans don’t come cheap; investors hope to derive maximum realistic value, and markets don’t run on sentiments or passion; therefore, budgets, production timelines and marketing strategies must align.
Projects will often split funding between debt and equity, and in essence, the filmmaker will be giving up a sizable cut of the potential profit pie. The question, then, it seems to me, is whether or not we as filmmakers can bake bigger pies.
Let me say it before you remind me: Yes, many efforts have been made to bring funding to the industry. The Bank of Industry, the Central Bank of Nigeria and many more have made loans available to industry practitioners over the years. However, the jury is still out on how truly impactful and sustainable those initiatives were. That, my friends, is talk for another day.
I do not seek in others that which I fear to face in myself, so this isn’t just an opinion for me. This is what I am doing currently with my team and our financial partners, and there are many other institutional VC and PE firms out there that are willing to become funding partners for industry practitioners willing to make necessary adjustments for potentially bigger outcomes.
Nollywood was built on the back of risk-takers. The founding fathers and mothers took loans, mortgaged properties, and sold family assets to bring their film projects to life, in a hostile environment that saw them as little better than time-wasters. Against all odds, they built the industry whose name we all proudly bear today.
If they could, so can we.
In spite of the coming of the latest “saviours” in the name of streamers, the odds are still piled high against us where a sustainable next level is concerned. If we are ever going to truly break free and put ourselves in a position to extract more value, bigger risks with long-term partners is the path I see.
Unless you are saying we can’t, that we don’t have what it takes to restructure for bigger gains.
Unless you’re saying that we are so set in our ways that leaving old habits and birthing new corporate structures isn’t possible because, as it is often said, we are a phenomenal people and formal structures are our achilles heels and therefore, we are predestined to fail at things that require efforts beyond our comfort zones.
Is that what we are saying?
