External financing of intellectual property in Nigeria’s movie and television industry is bearing more fruits, leading to a boost of locally produced content. Already, the quality of production is more appealing to attract more international investors to partner with producers in Africa particularly, South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria.
From next month, new original contents from Nigeria will be available on international streaming services, Netflix.
Netflix Director of Licensing and Co-Productions in Africa, Ben Amadasun, announced the new deal recently. These films are from ace movie makers such as Mo Abudu, Kunle Afolayan and Kemi Adetiba.
Mo Abudu’s Ebonylife TV is bringing ‘Òlòtūré.’ This is the story of a young female journalist who goes undercover as a prostitute to expose a human trafficking syndicate. The story is set in Lagos, West Africa’s commercial nerve centre. It’s expected to be available from October 2.
Kunle Afolayan and the Golden Effect Pictures team produced the movie ‘Citation’ which is available from November 6.
Another maestro of the big screen, Kemi Adetiba, will premier the sequel to the 2018 crime thriller, ‘King of Boys II’. It will be available in early 2021.
These are parts of the outcome of the local collaboration between African producers and Netflix.
$70,000 per licensed movie is paid by Netflix to acquire movies. This is from a total budget of $6 billion Africa wide investment. This may not be near the budget for blockbusters in Hollywood or Bollywood but the direct turn over or return on investment is worth it, particularly in sub-Sahara Africa.
Netflix subscriptions come in 3 monthly plans such as Basic, Standard and Premium which cost $7.99 (3,048.18 Naira), $8.99 (3,429.68 Naira) and $11.99 (4,574.18 Naira) respectively and going with the current naira to dollar conversion rate.
According to the UNFPA, Nigeria had 60,102, 853 youths between 10-24 years old in 2017. That’s the population that watches movies more than others. So, the market is available. Consider, this calculation, if the 20-24 age range total 16,505,308 (16 billion individuals) all pay for the basic Netflix access which cost 3,048.18 Naira will earn 50,311,149,739.4 (50 billion Naira).
Movie critics expect the latest arrival of Netflix in Nigeria will encourage other streaming services like HBO, Amazon Prime and Disney Plus to come to the party. Yvonne Orji is still trending on HBO.
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