Nollywood: The Nigerian film industry without an industry With budgets as low as a few thousand dollars, a digital camera, a laptop, and no sets, Nigerias filmmakers have created the second largest film industry in the world. This means Nigeria is a bigger producer of movies than the U.S. and is second only to Indias Bollywood in terms of number of productions per annum. And I should mention that while the film industries of India and the U.S. are each about 100 years old, the Nigerian film industry is a youthful 20. •On an annual basis there are between 1000 and 2000 new productions, with as many as 200 new productions per month •Average budget of a Nollywood film: US$17,000 - US$23,000 •Average number of copies sold (on DVD): 50,000 •Average price per DVD: $3 - $6 •Average Nollywood shoot is one week, with all shooting done on video, all on location (no sets, no studios) •Movies considered to be hits sell a few hundred thousand copies and can sell up to 150,000–200,000 units nationwide in one day. •Value of Nigerian film industry in 2013: $590M, up from $250M in 2010 •Over 500 languages are spoken in Nigeria, but the dominant language is English and the majority of productions are in English As an entrepreneur, 32-year-old chemistry graduate Jason Njoku achieved success in a most unlikely way: he is Africa’s largest distributor of Nigerian movies, and has raked in over $8 million since 2010, when he founded the company Iroko Partners. In December 2012 he captivated an audience at a conference in Texas, United States, as he narrated the story of his success after failures in some other business ventures. Mr. Njoku currently has 71 employees in Lagos, London and New York, and often boasts that “these people are working for us in a country with 50% unemployment.” He was recently listed by Forbes, an American business magazine, as one of the top 10 young African millionaires to watch. - See more at: un.org/africarenewal/magazine/may-2013/nigeria%E2%80%99s-film-industry-potential-gold-mine#sthash.BxEhgn2k.dpu
Posted on: Sat, 22 Feb 2014 09:32:12 +0000