Nigeria needs more cinemas – Filmhouse boss

Although the cinema culture is finding its way back into the minds of Nigerians, its journey is quite crippled due to the low number of cinema houses across the country. In a chat with Saturday Beats, the Group Executive Director of Filmhouse Cinemas and Filmone Distribution and Production, Moses Babatope, said that Nigeria can only boast of 29 cinema houses and 133 theatre screens.

“We have only 29 cinemas and 133 screens in Nigeria and if you have a very strong film, those 29 cinemas would be made available for your film. With that, how much can you really make? With that, you would pay tax, the cinema houses, and other people. Nigeria needs more cinema houses and tax breaks like the government just announced. But most importantly, we need to fight against piracy and capacity building. We still need a lot but we are moving in the right direction. Things are getting better and this year, Nigerian movies would make more money than they made last year. Nigeria movie against Hollywood would be 60:40 in favour of Hollywood.  Three years ago, it was 95:5 but today it is 60:40. It means that even with all the setbacks we have, we are showing our resilience,” he said.

Recently, his company released a movie, My wife and I, which starred some Nigerian A-list celebrities like Omoni Oboli and Ramsey Nouah. Speaking on the project, Babatope gave reasons why they were involved in the project.

“What we do is to create premium Nigerian movies for a global consumption. Why we invested in My Wife and I was because of the quality of the script and the personnel that were involved. It is one of the few scripts that I have read from the beginning to the end very quickly. I found it very intelligent and funny, so it was something we had to be involved in,” he said.

Source: Punch