- Basketmouth has criticized Nollywood producers for poorly managing funds from international streaming platforms.
- In an interview, he revealed that many producers spend just 10% of the budget on actual movie production, using the rest for their own needs.
- He noted that streaming services started paying actors directly to avoid dishonest producers.
Comedian and filmmaker Bright Okpocha, known as Basketmouth, has criticized Nollywood producers for poorly managing funds from international streaming platforms.
In an interview on Arise TV, he revealed that many producers spend just 10% of the budget on actual movie production, using the rest for their own needs.
He noted that streaming services started paying actors directly to avoid dishonest producers, but these producers have responded by asking actors to return half of their payments. Basketmouth said:
“When the streaming platforms came in, they gave money to these producers, and I’ll tell you point blank: these producers would take the money $1.5 million or whatever they give them and use about 10% of that money to make the movie.”
“Even to the point where the streaming platforms stepped in and said, ‘You know what? We are going to be paying the actors directly,’ these guys would still go behind and tell the actors to pay half of that money back to them. You can verify the information anywhere.”
He claimed that the dishonest practice has greatly harmed the quality of Nollywood films. He added:
“So, when you do that and expect your movie to be 100%, it can’t. It’s impossible. But these guys? They’ll cut, buy houses, buy cars. And that’s why when you see our movies, some of our epic movies look like stage plays.”
Basketmouth’s remarks follow actor and filmmaker Kunle Afolayan’s announcement that Netflix has stopped commissioning original content from Nigeria.
Afolayan expressed concern that this change will greatly affect the earnings of producers who invest a lot in making films.
