FilmHouse Cinemas Chief Operating Officer, Moses Babatope, believes Nigeria needs more cinema screens around the country for more development.
According to him in an interview with Saturday Beats, while the cinema culture is getting back to life in Nigeria, the growth is stunted by the number of cinema houses around the country.
He said:
We have only 29 cinemas and 133 screens in Nigeria and if you have a very strong film, those 29 cinemas would be made available for your film.
With that, how much can you really make? With that, you would pay tax, the cinema houses, and other people.
Nigeria needs more cinema houses and tax breaks like the government just announced. But most importantly, we need to fight against piracy and capacity building.
We still need a lot but we are moving in the right direction. Things are getting better and this year, Nigerian movies would make more money than they made last year.
Nigeria movies against Hollywood would be 60:40 in favour of Hollywood. Three years ago, it was 95:5 but today it is 60:40. It means that even with all the setbacks we have, we are showing our resilience.
Speaking on his Agency 106’s recent film project, My Wife and I, featuring Ramsey Nouah, Omoni Oboli, Rachel Oniga, Jemima Osunde and more, Babatope said they invest in movies based on the quality of the script.
What we do is to create premium Nigerian movies for a global consumption. Why we invested in My Wife and I was because of the quality of the script and the personnel that were involved.
It is one of the few scripts that I have read from the beginning to the end very quickly. I found it very intelligent and funny, so it was something we had to be involved in.