Over 500 million watch Nollywood, says Saint Obi

Saint Obi was born on the 16th of November in Port-Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. He studied Theatre Arts at the University of Jos, Plateau State and graduated with B.A. (Hons). He speaks English, Igbo, Hausa and a little of the Yoruba Language. An athlete who had represented Plateau State in both Football and Basketball tournaments.



He also enjoys body building. Saint Obi joined the Nigerian Film Industry (Nollywood) in 1996 and instantly rose to the top – a feat yet to be matched by any in the industry.

What is going on, We haven’t heard much from you.?
Nothing much I’ve been doing lately… . I’ve been keeping quiet because I’m working on a lot of stuff…movies.


Well the problem with the industry at the moment is …. I saw it coming from afar. When I told people that having too many movies in the market would make the industry go bad…let’s try and control the numbers of films we make… If we have 60 movies coming out in a week, how many are you going to buy and how many are you not going to buy? So, it forces people to rent these movies.


So, that has resulted in the industry being choked out, in terms of the market. So, a lot of people are not making more movies after they lost a lot of money, after producing movies earlier. So, there’s a law in the market right now. But despite all that, some people are still…
But for me, I think that to start a new course for the industry is the right key, the industry is not as famous as a lot of people think. Yet, you must give it to them when they try. But at a point, greed took over. These people were not in it to make movies.


They saw it as a way of making quick money for themselves. So, what we need to do is to go back to the drawing board.I’m not surprised at all by this but I think we need to move forward. Again, there is no science in our marketing and because of this….


Beyond the law of the business, as long as there’s money in your pocket to make films, is there supposed to be a problem with the …?
No, you see, that’s not the way forward. The problem with our country is that we like short cut. We don’t wanna build solid people. Those that initiated Hollywood, most of them are dead now. For me, I’m a visionary, without a sense of modesty, and I make no apologies for it.
I think, what is that big picture? Is it Idumota? Absolutely not. Is it Onitsha or is it Aba? Is it Kano? That is not. It’s nonsense. Nigeria is made up of 140 million people. Why don’t you make a movie that will hit one percent of that population?


But the problem is that we started from a wrong footing. That wrong footing is, instead of doing movies the way it ought to be done ,which is, you go through premiere, then through cinema screening, before it comes to the home video level.


Then you go to the TV rights. But what we do is that we leave all necessary things and go all the way to DVDs. By that you’ve lost the premiere money you gonna make, you’ve lost the cinema money, you just go to DVD. What they do is they trade by barter, give me a certain number of slots, I give you my movie. We just sell ourselves cheap and it is the problem from the people who started the industry, and that’s one thing I always say that pioneers in the movies industry have always soiled the water for others coming behind and that’s a very bad thing to do.
There need to be people who are focused for a long run, not a 100m dash.



What’s wrong with the industry?
Like I said, it’s all about the big picture. So, for me, I’d rather get the industry right, because if you pay me N2million and I’m making that every two weeks, or thereabout, that’s no money on the long run.
You think you’re making money but at a point, people will stop buying and that’s what happens and the marketers who were paying you N2million will not have money to pay you next time because the movie was not able to sell well. So, from N2million or thereabout, it begins to drop.
At a point, you’d hear the guy telling you ‘ bros, take that 5k (N5, 000) or nothing else for you!’ Do you understand? That’s just an example. So, for me, I started and had to set aside and see what I could do.



How I can make a difference, alright?

Ihave a project, a movie that I produced and directed in America, since 2004 (True Colour) now I’ve that movie and wanna push it out there but because the industry is perceived from Idumota point of view, when you’re talking to one of those people who also are supposed to support the venture, they don’t understand where you’re coming from.
So, I now said, ‘look, I have to set aside so that I can build that vision that can take the industry to the next level. People say, ‘well we’re pioneers, people that ’d reap from what we’re sowing now are going to be our children. But I said, ‘No, this is not 1950.


This is 2009. We have the population we have the technology to enjoy the goodies. I feel that in this dispensation, we must be part of that goodies. It’s not the one that will happen in the next one year. It should happen now. But we need to do our homework.
But the problem I have with this industry is that the actors and actresses actually sold out the rights to these marketers. Those were the ones bringing funds. So, nobody thought of looking for sponsors. The actors didn’t have much to do with it.


It has to do with the independent producers who are not marketers. Most of them collect money from marketers, that they are going to pay the actors but they won’t pay and that’s where the actors came on board. These people will now realize that these movies are actually owned by so and so marketers. They now go and complain to the marketers that this man did not pay me. These marketers will now tell them, ‘let’s come into the industry and see what we can do to amend this problem.’

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