By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Nollywood rising: the world's third largest B.O.
ChiTrib’s foreign correspondent Paul Salopek goes to Nigeria, where money woes in the early 1990s stemmed a steady stream of kung fu and Chuck Norris videos, leading to the birth of Nollywood: “A wellspring of some 50 new films a week, home to a unique genre that might be called “romantic voodoo,” and a cinematic assembly line that churns out blockbusters for as little as $8,000 apiece… Nigeria has emerged as the hottest… movie mecca in Africa… The country’s brash young film industry—inevitably dubbed “Nollywood”—[rakes] in at least $200 million a year, making it the third-largest box office in the world after the US and India…. Shot mainly in English with hand-held video cameras, then copied endlessly onto cheap [CDs], Nigerian titles have flooded… stores and dusty village markets across Africa… Their popularity has even toppled the biggest obstacle to moviemaking on the polyglot continent: Nigerian films are in such high demand that they are being subtitled [for] French-speaking Africa… “We know we can’t beat Hollywood on production values–not yet,” said Cyprain Chukwunta, a producer with more than 40 movies, none of which took longer than a week to film… “But our quality is constantly improving,.. I predict that one day we won’t just dominate Africa but the world. By 2010 we will be No. 2, minimum.” See also this story from Nigeria Online. A Nigerian filmmakers’ bulletin board, with links to a regularly updated raft of relevant articles, is here; you can find fan boards at this link.