The Nigerian Movie Industry is Built on Survival, not Love – Don Omope
Don Omope, Director of recently released romantic-comedy ‘Makate Must Sell’, in a tete-a-tete with EE Live discussed his experiences in Nollywood so far, producing and directing box office hits.
“I have worked in TV for many years in the UK, BBC, Aljazeera etc, and i have directed many productions over the years. I just haven’t done a film yet but i have written extensively about the art of filmmaking as a critic.
If anything i was more of a director than a producer but when i joined FilmOne to launch the movie production division of the business and spear head the development of films, i spent most of my time in the management, operations and business of films,” he began.
Omope went on to state that to achieve his vision for his idea of films, he had to be on the producing end of the work because he considers it the most powerful position on the movie set.
“It wasn’t much of a transition for me, the needs of the films (Wedding Party, Taxi Driver, Chasing Hanifa) was such that i had to put aside my directing experience and focus on producing to ensure we got a great product,” he said.
“Typical of most things in Nollywood, people assumed I was born in 2015, because that’s when i moved to Nigeria and people started hearing my name. So I decided to direct a film (TATU) to show everyone I was as knowledgeable as i claimed to be at my work,” the Director added.
Speaking about relationships in Nollywood, Omope commented; “Know your friends and that fights should never be seen as personal. Nollywood is built on the need to survive and not love so match your expectations with reality when dealing with people.”
On his 2017 project, TATU, the Producer revealed why he thought the movie didn’t do so well in the Box Office; “Tatu was great, people loved it and i found it a fulfilling experience to develop an idea then script it and shoot it as expected. It was a very technical film, we filmed day as night and night as day just to keep to our tight budget.
It’s a work i am proud of and having the highest nominations at the AMVCA went on to seal things that we know what we doing.”
“The budget wasn’t really huge given what we achieved. 50 Million Naira is standard in today’s Nollywood cinema films. We didn’t’ do well in the cinemas because we messed up the marketing, if we didn’t we would have competed better,” he concluded.
