Since February, some of the world’s biggest public events have been cancelled, leading to a gross loss of over $200 million for the music industry alone. Joining the global initiatives of providing a smart way around the situation, Nigeria’s renowned creative collective, Livespot360 has a slew of new cutting-edge formats across entertainment and experiential marketing.
In the aspect of entertainment, the company announced an innovation called Lutopia, aimed at engaging consumers with state-of-the-art experiences through drive-in discos, parties, clubs, concerts, cinemas, drive-thru fast food & grill and other experiences.
As the initiatives seek, perhaps equally enjoyable alternative to physical events, the overall idea is to help salvage the entertainment industry that has been heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The issue is inexhaustible as a fan of Standby; Olaitan Faranpojo raises similar concerns while responding to last week’s discourse on the future of entertainment business in the post Covid-19 era.
He writes:
Dear Victor, well said. I hope you are keeping well.
Of course, steady electricity and less expensive Internet would solve many problems in Nigeria. Expensive electricity generation at the malls that house many cinemas made tickets very expensive, the last time I checked, the filmmakers still received nearly 50% of the box office revenues. Unfortunately, even in the best times, the cinema only provided enough revenues for a small number of films to have a profit. Some films also received sponsorship funds and money from VIP screenings, so they also made money (Kunle Afolayan, Omoni Oboli and Mo Abudu are great at the sponsorships). So, in the end, only a relatively small number of films really made money from their theatrical release while the traditional markets for non-theatrical films shrank or disappeared. The money from TV and VOD is not enough to justify budgets that exceed a relatively small amount.
READ ALSO: COVID-19: Top Nigerian celebs count losses as pandemic rages on
So many Nigerian filmmakers have become extremely proficient at making movies on limited budgets. However, I still feel that the quality of the scripts has not been good. I don’t like the trend shown in movies, celebrating excesses. I much prefer UP NORTH, where a man learns to be an adult rather than just use wealth to never accept responsibility.
Your analysis of the future of Nollywood is a little bleak, but it is the way I feel about the future of the film industry. There will be smaller films with low budgets made for the DTH audience (mainly SVOD and AVOD). What have usually been considered theatrical films will suffer from smaller box office, but with some films attracting a Premium TVOD price if released along with the theatrical – watching at home for $40, $50 or even $100). Unfortunately, the amount of money that the SVOD companies like Netflix are paying producers keep going down as they create more by themselves. The other SVOD companies pay even less. Do you know how much Nigerian films are able to get from Netflix now? It’s very clear that the prices are not that high now. I know there was a lot of talk about the amount of money LIONHEART received, but I don’t know what the truth is.
The cinema industry worldwide is having a complete collapse. There is just no way to operate the business if you are only allowed to sell 50% of the seats. That means only 50% or less from concessions and increased costs from extra cleaning. That business already had a very low profit margin and high fixed costs. They will have to find a new business model to survive. They can’t charge more for tickets because no one has any money now.
It is an interesting discussion. I read some days ago about the US Director’s Guild, they just issued a new set of production guidelines for the pandemic, and it will certainly increase production costs. I have no idea how anyone is going to secure insurance for future productions – without which, at least 50% of productions cannot be made at all.
I hope we are both wrong and that the global film industry will recover and that Nollywood will come back stronger than ever.
–Faranpojo Olaitan is the CEO/Festival Director, Gospel Film Festival
Leave a Reply