The trailer of "The American King", a new Hollywood and Nollywood comedy showing in selected cinemas in Nigeria.
Cinemas in Nigeria are losing millions of dollars, because of poor marketing and publicity.
Nigerian film distributors and exhibitors don't seem to have any budget for the marketing and publicity of movies for cinemas in Nigeria rated as the second largest film industry in the world after India for the annual quantity of film productions.
The more marketing promotions for their movies, the more people that will be attracted to watch the movies and increase the population of moviegoers in Nigeria with more sales of tickets.
I have been increasing the attractions of cinemas by having screenings of documentary films for secondary schools at the cinemas since 2013 to date. The secondary school students who were teenagers seven years ago in 2013 are now grown-ups in their 20s and majority of them have graduated from tertiary institutions and gainfully employed with enough disposable incomes to pay for tickets for movies at the cinemas.
Many of them have commended me for their appreciation of the cinema culture.
Film distributors and exhibitors in the established film industries of Hollywood of the United States of America, Bollywood of India, China, UK and South Africa have budgets of millions of dollars for marketing and publicity for movies and their movies have been the highest grossing movies in the world which the NIgerian film industry has not achieved with the thousands of movies produced annually in Nollywood and Kannywood.
South Africa does not produce up to a quarter of the movies produced annually by NIgeria, but has produced the highest grossing movies in Africa with "District 9" grossing US$210.8 million in 200; followed by "The God's Must Be Crazy" - US$100 million; "Zambezia" - US$34.4 million; "Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom" - US$27.3 million; "Khumba )" – $28.42 million (which the producers even reached out to me for the publicity in 2013) and the critically acclaimed "Tsotsi" - $12 million. It was the first African film to win the highly coveted Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (now Best International Feature Film) in 2006.
No NIgerian movie has made up to US$3 million from the box office.
The ready made common reason would be that South Africa has hundreds of cinemas whereas NIgeria has less than 100 cinemas. But the 100 cinemas with about 220 screens can make up to US$3 million monthly with proper marketing and publicity for movies.
The Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria (CEAN) reported that cinemas in Nigeria made N301.48 million from tickets sold across the country in February, 2022
National President of CEAN, Mr. Patrick Lee said this was a tremendous increase compared with N224.34 million made from ticket sales in February, 2021.
UNESCO reported that the African film industry has great potential, but the lack of infrastructure like one cinema screen per 787,402 people makes it a laggard.
According to a new UNESCO report, about 5 million people currently work in the film sector in Africa, which contributes $5 billion to the continent's GDP.
Film distributors and exhibitors in Nigeria should increase their budgets for marketing and publicity of the movies they have accepted for their cinemas. They have to increase the appreciation for cinemas by millions of people in NIgeria from the lower class to the upper class of the society.
Over 60 million Nigerians spend over N730 billion annually on sports betting and at least two billion naira is generated daily according to a recent data with each one spending more than N3, 000 weekly on betting. So, millions of Nigerians have disposable personal income (DPI) to afford paying for tickets for movies at the cinemas.
- By EKENYERENGOZI Michael Chima,
Publisher/Editor,
NOLLYWOOD MIRROR®Series
247 Nigeria (@247nigeria) / Twitter
The American King is currently the #1 Comedy in NIgeria from March 4-17, 2022 and has attracted thousands of moviegoers to the cinemas.
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