Bootlegging is also common in the Nigerian music industry. In fact, upcoming acts patronize the pirates to include their songs in pirated CDs and DVDs or mix-tapes to make them popular. Almost everyone has become entangled in the vicious circle of piracy. And this is the nightmare of every film distributor in every part of the world.
We might as well negotiate with the pirates of movies and songs and reach a mutual agreement with them for the general distribution of our movies and songs.
Is my suggestion ludicrous? But, such an expedient resolution may be the solution for the elimination of piracy in the entertainment industry.
Nigerian filmmakers need accountable and responsible film distributors who are honest and transparent and are not partners in crime with the pirates.
If you give your movie to a film distributor, then you should also make sure that the film distributor will be responsible for the safety of the movie from the film distribution office to the cinema or from the street to the internet.
Check out the track records of a film distributor before you give your movie to him or her.
Can the film distributor be trusted?
A good film distributor should also have good marketing and publicity for films and not a film distributor that does little or nothing to promote movies.
Publicity should be a multimedia strategy, including press releases, press conferences, radio and TV interviews and social media promotions.
If the publicity of a movie is not well done, the movie may flop at the cinemas. Mismanaged publicity plans have made many Nigerian movies to flop, because of inadequate budget and poor planning.
If a filmmaker does not have enough budget for the promotion of a movie, the film distributor should take up the responsibility, because the more movie goers your publicity attracts to the cinemas, the more money your movie will make and you will make more profit.
There is no successful film distribution without film promotion.
The highest grossing Nollywood movie so far, “30 Days in Atlanta” produced by popular comedian Ayo Makun and directed by Robert Peters succeeded, because of a good publicity plan by the filmmakers, film distributors and film exhibitors. That is why the romantic comedy made more money at the cinemas than the so called most expensive Nigerian movies “Half of a Yellow Sun” and “Doctor Bello”.
Poor PR and poor publicity made both films to flop. Even the hype of the celebrated Nollywood diva, Genevieve Nnaji as the Box Office Queen of “Half of a Yellow Sun” was ambiguous and erroneous, because the publicist failed to show what made her the “Box Office Queen” of Nollywood when most of her movies flopped at the cinemas. If you spend US$500, 000 for a movie starring the “Box Office Queen” and you made only half of your film production budget at the few cinemas in Nigeria, is that what makes her a “Box Office Queen”? And she did not even play a leading role in “Half of a Yellow Sun”. That was a wrong publicity strategy.
The publicists did not even know how to use sound bites and they were actually confused.
The film was also given to the wrong film distributor that did not have any proven success record for film promotion and has no publicity for one of the most expected films in 2014.
A Biafran war film that failed to attract even a quarter of the Igbos who were the worst victims of that war and then casting the most popular Igbo actress in Nollywood as a Yoruba woman when a sensational Funke Akindele or Queen of Nollywood, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde would have made the cameo role of Genevieve Nnaji as “Ms Adebayo” more attractive to millions of Yorubas.
Then the leading Black British actors were too snobbish to grant interviews to the most popular film critics and bloggers in Nigeria, but they rushed to be interviewed by the foreign news media for their other Hollywood movies competing for the Oscars. But the filmmakers and film distributors could not use them to promote the film in Nigeria. Then, the hyenas of the film industry, the movie pirates pounced on it and worsened the nightmares of the filmmakers and confused film distributors.
Any film distributor that is reluctant to spend enough money for the publicity of your movie is not good enough for you.
You have to see that the film distributor has a functional department for marketing and publicity.
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