ADEBAYO: Nollywood Is Open For Competition
• Our Concern Is How To Create Enabling Environment
Since playing the lead role in Femi Lasode-produced Wale Adebayo has appeared in a lot of flicks, soaps and others. The lawyer-turned-actor, who has been off the scene, tells OMIKO AWA that he will soon be back with something big.
WELL, basically I have always had a creative spirit. It was almost a certainty that somehow my spirit and the acting/film industry will eventually collide and it did while I was still in class three in Satellite Secondary School, Satellite Town, Lagos. I joined the dramatic society in the school, and as they say, the rest is history. was improving in quality, it was also creating a great divide between being a professional actor that knows his/her onion and being a social media savvy. We are all in the social media savvy train now. I have not done any major acting here in the United States. It’s not easy here too. However, the process has been established and hopefully something will break soon.
Like I said earlier, the industry has been thrown wide-open right about now and the competition among filmmakers is becoming fierce. We now have other platforms like Iroko (the Netflix of Nigeria) competing with DSTV to create and buy contents on daily basis. The industry has expanded now, we are moving into animations/cgi (common gateway interface) like what Komotion Studios just did with
from another perspective. All we need now is just that small push to begin to have our movies officially screened in multiplex across the world. Industry professionals will find their way to the platform and for those who can’t compete, well, it is going to be really hard, because these young ones are not backing down. movies to being a household phenomenon in Africa, eventually, if we keep on this part that, we would be able to bridge the gap. A lot of people in America are actually working tirelessly to see that something is done about it. A yearly event just started in Los Angeles (LA) and three movies that have been outstanding in Nigeria would be shown at the cinema in Los Angeles. It is gradual, but it has started.
It is actually second and third. Second largest in terms of what we churn out and third as per revenue base and there is no other industry that has sprang up to replace in terms of creating and releasing movies. Don’t forget our industry keeps expanding and improving each day, so, I know eventually we shall see the silver lining.
Guilds are always important even though the Nigerian entertainment guilds, especially the film industry don’t seem to have the bite to strike at the heart of the problem between practitioners and investors. We can’t scrap them, we have to keep believing that some day, sanity will reign and new set of administrators who are not selfish will come. case, they are more organised, while we are still struggling. As I said earlier, the Nigerian movie industry is moving in the right direction and we will eventually get there.