Tag: netflix new movies

What Netflix’s Involvement in Nigeria’s Massive Film Industry Really Means

Big investors seem to be mainly interested in Nollywood’s already established popularity with African audiences.

Global streaming service Netflix set its eyes a few years ago on Nigeria’s film industry, better known as Nollywood. Distribution of Nigerian movies on Netflix started around 2015. At the time the American giant bought the rights of blockbusters such as Kunle Afolayan’s October 1st, Biyi Bandele’s Fifty and several others, after they had already been distributed in Nigerian cinemas.

During the Toronto International Film Festival 2018, Netflix announced the acquisition of worldwide exclusive distribution rights for Nollywood star Genevieve Nnaji’s debut film as director, the comedy Lionheart. The film marked the first Netflix original film from Nigeria. Many saw this as the beginning of a new era in the relationship between one of the world largest streaming platforms and Africa’s most prolific film industry.

But, is this actually true? Is Netflix going to transform Nollywood? And how significant will its impact on the Nigerian film industry be?

Difficult questions

These are not easy questions to answer. Nollywood’s economy and modes of production are unlike those of most other film industries. Over the past 20 years, Nigerian films have circulated mostly on videotapes and Video Compact Discs (VCDs).

Also Read: Netflix Strikes Another Blow Against the Old School Film Industry

This distribution system made the industry widely popular across Africa and its diaspora. But it prevented Nollywood from consolidating its economy and raising the quality of film production. Piracy dramatically eroded distribution revenues and producers had trouble monetising the distribution of their films. Nollywood prioritised straight-to-video distribution because cinema theatres had almost disappeared in the country (as in most other parts of Africa) as a result of the catastrophic economic crisis that affected Nigeria in the 1980s.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

#Lionheartthemovie #tiff2018

A post shared by “LIONHEART” (@lionheartthemovie) on


New multiplexes have emerged since the beginning of the 2000s. However, today there are only about 150 widescreens for a population of almost two hundred million people. The cinemas that exist are often too expensive for most of the population that used to buy and watch Nollywood films when they were distributed on tapes.

The trailer from ‘Lionheart’.

Within this context, many in the industry thought that streaming could be the best solution to the industry’s problems with distribution. However, a closer look to the history of what has been labelled the “Nigerian Netflix” (iROKO.tv, the leading streaming platform for Nigerian contents) shows that the reality is more complicated.

When the company decided to move its headquarters from Manhattan to Lagos it encountered countless difficulties. They were mainly connected to the costs of infrastructure development in Nigeria and to the hostility of local distributors who controlled Nollywood’s economy since its creation.

Weak internet

Internet connection in Nigeria is still too weak and expensive to guarantee easy access to streaming platforms. As a result, Nollywood content distributed by iROKO.tv and Netflix circulates mostly in the diaspora. Netflix is aware of this problem and is investing in infrastructures to secure a better connection for its Nigerian audiences.

But larger investments seem to be necessary to produce a significant impact on audiences’ behaviour. Accessing Nollywood films via piracy or local screening venues will continue to be, at least in my view, the key strategy adopted by the largest percentage of Nigerian viewers.

Also Read: ‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before’: Hollywood Wakes up to the Asian-American Experience

Netflix could have better chances in penetrating the country’s elite market, as richer people in Nigeria and across Africa have easier access to reliable power supply and internet.

This might be the reason why MultiChoice, the South African telecommunication giant controlling much of Nollywood distribution across Africa through its Africa Magic channels, has reacted nervously to Netflix’s increased interest in African markets. MultiChoice wants Netflix to be more closely regulated.

These two aren’t the only telecommunication “superpowers” in the field. France’s Canal Plus and the Chinese StarTimes have also made a few investments in Nollywood over the past few years. The competition among all these actors will probably have a positive impact for viewers across Nigeria and the continent. It could bring lower subscription fees for streaming and TV content packages.

There are also likely to be new investments in content production and infrastructures. And there’s larger continental and global exposure for Nollywood films in the offing.

Foreign investments

It remains to be seen how good these developments will be for Nollywood producers. Until now, foreign investments in Nollywood have mostly translated into “more of the same” content. Working conditions for crews and actors have remained the same – basically, low budgets and quick shooting schedules.

In fact, big investors seem to be mainly interested in Nollywood’s already established popularity with African audiences. Making Nollywood more palatable for international audiences doesn’t seem to feature.

This means that in most cases they are not ready to invest bigger money in production budgets. Rather, they invest in better structuring distribution networks to extract as much profit as possible from the Nigerian industry.

And most African audiences are indeed happy with how Nollywood is, even if they tend to complain regularly about the low quality and the repetition of film contents and aesthetics. The fact that Nollywood, as it is keeps on attracting audiences, makes investors reluctant to change the scale of their production budgets.

There are a few bigger productions, with higher production standards, that have emerged over the past few years in Nollywood. But they have hardly been the result of investments made by foreign firms like Netflix, Canal Plus or MultiChoice.

Also Read: ‘Don’t Take Us for Granted,’ Audiences Told Bollywood in 2018

Nigerian producers are those who are mostly concerned about raising the quality of Nollywood films. They want to give better content to their audiences and reach global screens. In most cases, the people investing money in these kinds of projects have been independent producers or groups of investors related to the new business of multiplexes in Nigeria.

In my view, the question is: will these people benefit from Netflix, so as to continue investing in higher quality content? Or will Netflix and other international companies end up taking over the industry to make it only a bit more of the same?

Alessandro Jedlowski is a Collaborateur Scientifique FNRS at the Université Libre de Bruxelles

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Netflix Strikes Another Blow Against the Old School Film Industry

With the advent and growing popularity of digital screening platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, film purists are crying wolf over the demise of the cinema experience. But cinema is not dead yet.

Huge technological advances in the production and consumption of feature films have led, yet again, to the claim that cinema is dead. Digital film making, distribution and projection have seen reels of “film” all but disappear. And the availability of what we want to watch, whenever and wherever we wish, has changed irrevocably our relationship with the moving image.

The news that Netflix is showing new films by the Coen Brothers and Alfonso Cuaron (with only minimal theatrical screenings, so as to be eligible for the impending awards season) is being seen as yet another fundamental change in how we access film, and more specifically, “quality” cinema.

But although cinema is barely over a century old, its reliance on technology means it has always had a turbulent time. So perhaps it is worth looking at previous announcements of the demise of the most tawdry yet popular of the arts. Are the prophets of doom just crying wolf again?

Reaction and reinvention

The “end of cinema” was first declared in the late 1920s with the introduction of synchronised sound to silent film. But film had never actually been silent – music was always an accompaniment to any screening whether by a solo pianist or a full orchestra.

Yet purists still argued that sound would coarsen the artistic nature of cinema and make it merely a form of mass entertainment. Film production did indeed have to change to accommodate the technology required to record sound as well as a visual image, and there was a short period in which film production was bogged down by these innovations.

But by the mid-1930s, sound was ubiquitous, making cinema an even more popular form of mass entertainment with a plethora of memorable lines of dialogue to quote.

The threat from the sofa

The next major bump in the cinematic road came after World War II, and the beginning of the consumer age. The postwar boom saw mass employment and a host of new widely owned domestic devices. These included refrigerators, hifi systems and televisions – the new nemesis of the film industry.

As people stayed at home to watch TV rather than going out to the cinema, film production changed. Major studios made fewer films and concentrated on bigger, more spectacular movies. Shot in glorious wide screen Technicolor, they were made to be noticeably distinct from what was available at home.

This slump in film production did not last long, however. The big studios soon found a voracious demand for product from the upstart small screen. Soon enough, most had set up television divisions to mass produce filmed shows for syndication to broadcast networks. For Hollywood, television turned out to be more saviour than Satan.

The next crisis came in the late 1970s with the introduction of home video devices to record and play shows and films from broadcast television. Yes, there was another slump in cinema attendances – but this was due to a variety of issues, most notably the parlous state of many cinemas which were often old, run down, and in the wrong parts of town.

Also Read: Why is Amazon Playing Uncle-Ji in the Indian Rollout of Prime Video?

Home video had its brief moment of hysteria before studios realised that there was now a demand for prerecorded video tapes of classic films – the same films which were taking up so much space in their archives. They now had a new lease of life, at zero production cost, and a new valuable stream of revenue.

This also led to a new pattern in film distribution. A movie now had a theatrical run, then a video release and was then sold to broadcasters for television. Again, the “death” was more of a rebirth, and a lucrative one at that, which continued with the invention of DVD and Blu-Ray.

In fact, the film industry’s recurring problem has always been its complacency and inability to see the potential benefits of new technology. The latest revolution, streaming films and TV shows to digital devices is more problematic, and one that has dangers for the big Hollywood studios (which are now after all, mere cogs in globalised multinational corporations).

Awards and access

Amazon, Apple and Netflix have evolved from being delivery systems into becoming fully fledged entertainment businesses. They produce, distribute and exhibit their product to a mass global audience, with budgets that dwarf those of established studios. And with the promise of future Oscars and Palme D’Ors, critical recognition and respectability will make them the major forces in film production.

So, is this the death of cinema (again), or another morphing of a global industry to changing habits and opportunities? Well, director Alphonso Cuaron’s Roma has already won the Golden Lion at 2018’s Venice Film Festival, and usually we would have to wait a year or so to see it as it does the round of festivals and awards.

Also Read: Rendering the Invisible Visible – the Magnificence of Alfonso Cuarón’s ‘Roma’

Instead it is now available on Netflix for anyone to watch in the comfort of their own home. Might the experience of watching a film in a cinema become exclusively the realm for big-budget blockbuster movies that employ such things as 3D, Ultra-HD, 4DX and every other technical excess that becomes available? Cinema attendances are in fact booming – attendances in 2018 are the highest since 1970 – so some ways in which we consume cinema remain quite traditional. It is the means of choosing a wider range of films and having near instant access to them that provide both challenges and opportunities.

Access is now the key advantage for streaming platforms – but this will also be in a constant state of flux as technology develops ever further. These new production houses will need to respond to the new problems and opportunities that will soon be theirs to deal with. They will soon realise that cinema never really dies, it just changes.

Martin Carter, Principal Lecturer in Film, Sheffield Hallam University

This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.