Nollywood needs to make more comedies- Filmmaker

With the soaring success of Nollywood comedies like A trip to Jamaica, Wedding Party and Its her day, revered filmmaker and director Niyi Akinmolayan has stressed on the need for Nollywood to make more comedy movies in 2017

He made this known via his article titled Things I would love to see in Nollywood 2017.

“I realize even in Hollywood that there’s always a period where a certain genre dominates the box office. This is important because you can leverage on that and get more people to the cinema and hope that eventually, they will see other things they like. Its foolishness to say “why are we only making comedies”. Like my mummy will say…that’s careless talk.

Comedies like “A trip to Jamaica”, “Its Her Day”, “Wedding Party” have in total brought more people to cinema this year than all the other films combined together. Talk to the figures. I want to see a huge comedy that pushes our box office to 500m…who knows with more cinemas to 1billion. Without these numbers, the investors we are looking for wont come, the audiences we are hoping to reach with other genre wont come. Tomorrow, it might not be comedy again but lets achieve a lot with it while its still king.”

He also says there is a need for us to improve on makeup and prosthetics in our movies stating that there is a lot that still needs to be done.

Hear him:” isn’t there any of you who have studied special effects make up abroad back home to show us how its done. Abi una no pass for the school. It’s a damn shame because we are still far behind on this.

I haven’t seen any special effect I am particularly proud of yet in our films. This is why we will be stuck with slapstick comedies for the most part. Some of the things needed to pull off some really cool ideas require good effects make up. I made this part of my wish list last year but it still hasn’t happened.We still haven’t figured out aging, old wound/scars; things that are crucial to character development. Please, if you are in diaspora trained in this kind of things, please come home. You will make plenty money. The whole industry has like one of two people they call when they need a broken head.”