The journey to prosperity.

I used to love writing. Now it's a struggle. Is this a sign that I will soon be a gbogbo bigz girlz? I hope so.

Have you people watched the Arbitration? A few weeks ago, I spoke about Nollywood taking over in cinemas as Nigerian music has in clubs and elsewhere. I mentioned The Arbitration as one of the films that will perform well, I wasn't wrong. It's enjoyed a sold out opening weekend. Hopefully I'm not wrong on all the others because the success of one Nollywood film, increases the chances of success for the next Nollywood film.

The cinema people, they do plenty shakara for us. Your film didn't have enough stars, it doesn't seem commercial enough etc. With little or no bargaining power, there's not much we can do. We're all in business to make money, filmmakers and producers alike. When Nollywood begins to outperform Hollywood in the cinemas, the conversation will automatically change. This won't happen by one film out a 100 films grossing 100 million but by several grossing at least 30 million. The bigger the pie, the bigger the slice we'll all get.  

This is something that I doubt many Nigerians understand. The more popular attitude is to desire to be the one and only. Everyone wants their film to be the number one grossing film. Nothing wrong with a little competition but the industry will grow bigger and faster if we competed as a group against Hollywood and Bollywood and not against one another. 

Niyi Akinmolayan is one of the people who understands this. He's just completed a workshop fully funded by him. His intention and ambition is to spread knowledge, to raise a new generation of filmmakers who'll make better films than him. 

Last year, we partnered on a workshop, The Afriville Empowerment Workshop, he bore most of the expenses. 

On Friday, I'll be interviewing him in an attempt to get into his head to understand what makes him different and what makes him tick. 

In the meantime, go watch The Arbitration, you'll like it.