Nollywood produces highest movies in 4yrs despite COVID-19

As coronavirus closed businesses around the world and forced millions to stay home, Nigeria’s film industry produced more local movies in 2020 compared to previous four years.

The arrival of the deadly COVID-19 alongside a nationwide lockdown led to a halt in film and TV productions, costing estimated tens of millions of dollars in lost earnings. However, film producers tried to focus on high-quality movies, growing cinema audiences, as lockdown was eased, and the likes of Netflix pushed to tap into the country’s over 200 million population.

Despite COVID-19 challenges, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show the number of movies produced surged by 477.6 percent to 2,599 in 2020, the highest when compared to 450 movies in 2017. In 2018 and 2019, it produced 565 and 700 movies, respectively

The NBS data also show that the number of movies produced in quarter one of 2021 stood at 416, almost close to what was made in 2017.

By location, Lagos had the highest with 149, closely followed by Onitsha with 140 movies, Benin City and Bauchi recorded two movies each, respectively. From the record, data were provided by the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB) and verified and validated by the NBS.

Experts in the movie industry have said that the challenges surrounding COVID-19 triggered a new height of creativity among Nigerian youths.

“The fact that more movies were produced in a disruptive year 2020 signals the resilience of the sector, and also highlights that the sector is gradually living up to its potentials,” Damilola Adewale, a Lagos-based economic analyst, said.

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Samuel Oniyitan, a movie producer, says the lockdown period provided the time and a little sense of sanity for most of them to write different stories, noting, “Before the lockdown, we really don’t have much time to write enough stories.”

Nigeria’s creative industry is one of the most vibrant in Africa. In recent years, the sector has seen a period of rapid progress facilitated by emerging digital technology, which supports content creation, distribution, and consumption.

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC Nigeria), Nollywood, the second largest film producer in the world, contributed 2.3 percent to Nigeria’s GDP in 2016. The industry is reported to generate between $500 million and $1 billion annually and is usually busy towards the end of the year.

Last year, Nigerian cinemas closed for six months had to depend on quality local movie content from Nollywood to stay afloat because of the drop in foreign contents.

Nollywood took advantage of the lack of foreign content by releasing quality local contents like Omo Ghetto, Fate of Alakada, Quam’s Money, Dear Affy, Rattlesnake: The Ahanna Story, Who’s the Boss, This Lady Called Life, Voiceless, Ìfé, Introducing The Kujus, that glued the Nigerian audience to various online platforms during the lockdown and the cinemas across the country, when lockdown was eased.

In order to increase its less than 50,000 Nigerian subscribers, last year, Netflix, a global on-demand movie streaming company increased its Nollywood originals on its video streaming platform and also collaborated with Nollywood directors and producers to churn out more local Netflix originals.

Robert Onyeri, a professional filmmaker, says young filmmakers are doing a phenomenal job in reinventing the Nollywood wheel, breaking from the norm, crafting fresh narratives and style on how we tell our stories. “It would do Nollywood a lot of good to foster and not stifle these young filmmakers,” he states.

Despite the growth in movie production, stakeholders have lamented the insufficient support from the present administration as against the previous President Goodluck Jonathan administration that set up the Nigerian Creative and Entertainment Industry Stimulation $200 million Loan Scheme meant to address major issues in the industry – distribution, capacity building and content production.

“There is no funding and structure in place. Goodluck did it and it worked because many people benefited from it,” an official from Filmone Cinemas says.