Kenneth Okonkwo, Andy Okeke, Living in Bondage, and the Sequel

Accelerate TV: The Whole Truth

Canal+ and Netflix Eye Nollywood Opportunities

(By Will McBain) – Canal+ and Netflix Eye Nollywood Opportunities

Increased foreign investment in the wake of the purchase of a Nollywood studio by Canal+ could be a game-changer for Nigeria’s already thriving film industry. Will McBain looks at the prospects for a sector targeted to make $1bn in export revenue by 2020.

Nollywood has begun the biggest financial makeover in its history with this summer’s acquisition of Lagos-based production house ROK film studios by French media giant Canal+.

The studio was bought from Africa’s largest subscription-based video-on-demand company IROKOtv, whose founder Jason Njoku called the sale the “largest media deal in West African history”. Actress and producer Mary Njoku – Jason Njoku’s wife – founded ROK studios and will stay on as director general under the Canal+ acquisition.

"Living in Bondage: Breaking Free" - A Sequel

Ramsey Nouah (L) and Kenneth Okonkwo

(By BellaNaija) – [A] sequel to Nollywood classic “Living In Bondage” is here … and it is titled “Living In Bondage: Breaking Free”.

Created by Play Network Africa in conjunction with Native Filmworks, the movie is co-produced by award-winning producer, Steve Gukas, Dotun Olakurin and Charles Okpaleke; and directed by Nollywood star Ramsey Nouah.

Living in Bondage: Breaking Free is the story of Nnamdi, Andy Okeke's mysterious son, and his vaunting quest for the big life, one that he would do whatever it took to realize. Nnamdi’s untamed quest for the quick buck, fast car, easy living, inevitably took him on a perilous journey that is better told by the cast of stellar performers, classic and current, including Kenneth Okonkwo, Kanayo O. Kanayo, Enyinna Nwigwe, Nancy Isime and Munachi Abii.

Nollywood is Too Big to Ever Die

"Nollywood is too big to ever die: it is the third [now second] largest film industry in the world, as we
like to keep repeating, and it will eventually be seen as one of the world's major film cultures. The story of its beginnings ought to be told with an appropriate level of depth, detail, and accuracy. One hopes that Nollywood will evolve into dazzling glory impossible to imagine at present, but the remarkable extent to which it holds on to and repeats themes, stories, and aesthetics suggests that a lot that will remain fundamental was laid down at or near the very beginning, that some of the early works will remain as classics, and that whatever the future of film in Nigeria turns out to be, it will be recognizable as an extension of what has already been created. To an extraordinary degree, [Kenneth] Nnebue's Living in Bondage (1992), the film that started the Nigerian video boom, contains the seeds of almost everything that followed."

Jonathan Haynes, 2010, 15

"What Is to Be Done?: Film Studies and Nigerian and Ghanaian Videos,"

in Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-first Century: Art Films and the 

Nollywood Video Revolution, ed. Mahir Saul and Ralph A. Austen

Nollywood: The Genesis, the Motivation

Okechukwu Ogunjiofor was a co-producer, with Kenneth Nnebue, of Nollywood's foundational movie, Living in Bondage. He actually sold the idea of the movie to Nnebue, who financed the film, becoming it executive producer. He became popularly known as Paulo, a character in Living in Bondage.

Tana Adelana's All-Time Nollywood Favorites

Tana Adelana; Photo source: Pulse.ng

In a recent interview with Pulse Nigeria, Nollywood actress Tana Adelana shared her favorite movies.

Meet Nollywood: A $3 Billion Industry

Photo source: Kunle Afolayan 

(Fortune)--Last year, data was released showing that Nollywood is a $3 billion industry. It is bigger than Hollywood by volume, and right behind India’s Bollywood.

In 1992, in Nigeria, electronics salesman Kenneth Nnebue shot a straight-to-video movie in one month, on a budget of just $12,000. Living in Bondage sold more than a million copies, mostly by street vendors, and Nollywood – Nigeria’s movie industry – was born.

By 2009, Nollywood had surpassed Hollywood as the world’s second largest movie industry by volume, right behind India’s Bollywood. And in 2014, the Nigerian government released data for the first time showing Nollywood is a $3.3 billion sector, with 1844 movies produced in 2013 alone.

Light, Camera, Africa

AN AFRICAN academic with a coiffed mane is sipping coffee in a Ghanaian airport when he spots a pulpy Nigerian film on an overhead screen. “A travesty, a grave crime,” he splutters. “Such imbecile images should never be shown in this country. They are veritably poisoning our culture.”

It is hard to avoid Nigerian films in Africa. Public buses show them, as do many restaurants and hotels. Nollywood, as the business is known, churns out about 50 full-length features a week, making it the world's second most prolific film industry after India's Bollywood. The Nigerian business capital, Lagos, is said by locals to have produced more films than there are stars in the sky. The streets are flooded with camera crews shooting on location. Only the government employs more people.

Nigerian films are as popular abroad as they are at home. Ivorian rebels in the bush stop fighting when a shipment of DVDs arrives from Lagos. Zambian mothers say their children talk with accents learnt from Nigerian television. When the president of Sierra Leone asked Genevieve Nnaji, a Lagosian screen goddess, to join him on the campaign trail he attracted record crowds at rallies. Millions of Africans watch Nigerian films every day, many more than see American fare. And yet Africans have mixed feelings about Nollywood.