The main market for Nigerian films is not the cinemas. We need to establish this and have a consensus on it now that Federal Government's N300 billion grant is set for disbursement.
Anyone doubting this assertion, especially those in government at any level, should please ask him/herself a question of when he/she last went to a cinema compared to when last he/she last watched a Nigerian movie bought or hired from a video shop or from TV, cable or terrestrial.
In the context of today's Nigeria, cinemas are elitist form of entertainment which has little or no impact on about 95 percent of the filmmakers. Even for the elites, going to cinema rates second to their noisy and wasteful Owambe parties!
Again anyone doubting this should go to the nearest public market and ask the traders when last anyone of them went to watch a movie at the cinemas, compared to when last that person watched a movie bought or hired from a video shop or on TV, cable or terrestrial.
Our high profile producers who have made a ritual of cinemas screening are doing so largely to impress their sponsors or attract new sponsors. Devoid of the financial might of such sponsors, they all know it is business suicide to rely only on the cinema box offices returns.
If anyone of them wants to challenge this, the right and simplest thing to do is answer why after so many of their blockbusters, they are still unable to fund their new productions by themselves or how much returns they have been able to make to their investors.
From the quality of our movie productions as regularly seen on the television, the main reason the bulk of producers prefer to stand on a long queue to hawk their works to the only paying cable TV in the country now is for no other reason than the reality of poor financial returns from the cinemas.
If it had been a paying proposition, we have producers whose productions can meet the quality benchmark of any cinema house in the country or internationally. It is not also correct to blame the paucity of the cinema houses as the reason why producers do not embrace the cinema option.
I recall my late uncle, Adeyemi Afolayan, better known as 'Ade Love' confidently telling us at Lagos' Surulere Super Cinema where the third or fourth of his film was screened that he could start to rely on people's patronage of his films to fund the future works. Few days later, at his Orile Igannmu (Lagos) house, he proudly showed us his fleet of vans taking his films to nooks and crannies of the country as his antidote to the high government entertainment taxes.
The point here is that any producer that believes cinemas are his/her market need not wait for more to be built but can hit the road with his own distribution van and projector to screen the movies at hotels, event centres and the schools. The scaring reality of such a move, however, is the major reason why after some half-hearted attempts at cinema screening, everyone puts the work for public home distribution or if that fails, to get it on the pay TV.
It is not for mere talk that we are known and referred to as the first and perhaps only Direct-To-Home, DTH, industry in the whole world. Cinema business is capital intensive and will not bring return in less than a year. Almost all the running costs are fixed from electricity supply to manpower and equipment.
This means that unless a certain level of revenue is consistently generated, bankruptcy will follow. Even now in America and across Europe, cinemas record impressive income only at students' holidays and during festivities because of stiff competition from triplex screening, on-line downloading, pay TVs and other modern day modes of entertainment. DVD sales and hiring incomes on the other hand keep growing.
Not long ago, Nigeria too paraded a set of flourishing cinema houses but that was when the economy was relatively buoyant and the populace had a reasonable level of peace of mind to spare a thought for going to cinema.
Then, cinema patronage was stimulating to intellectuals as it was to the royalties, courting couples, families, proletariat and potentates. But with the decline of our economy came the twin problems of transportation and insecurity to lives and properties, which affected the patronage to the extent of all the cinemas closing down or get converted to warehouse, event centre or church.
Added to those two is the battle for survival that keeps everyone on the move for an average of 16 hours a day! Where then is the time or inclination to go to cinema?
That is why and how watching the movies at home become the most favoured option for the people. It is also why the focus of the grant should be on strengthening our Direct-To-Home distribution. A single grant to build even the cheapest cinema will comfortably put about 10 producers to profitable work; 100 cast and crew members in gainful employment and will be more than enough to help almost all the licensed regional distributors activate their business with all the community retailers of that same region formalising their retail trade to give piracy a frontal attack.
Cinema screening is not entirely useless though but its focus should be behind that of our DTH distribution. Ogundaisi is a seasoned Nollywood practitioner and an advocate for lasting reforms in the local movie industry.
