How Actresses Make Money In Nigeria

Nigerians film producer, director and actor, Kunle Afolayan has shared his thoughts on a number of industry-related

Kunle is one of the sons of the late famous theatre and film director cum producer, Ade Love. He has produced and directed popular films like Irapada, The Figurine, Phone Swap, October 1, Roti, Omugwo, The Tribunal, The CEO , Mokalik and The Citation.

So how do filmmakers make their money?

Well, you can make some money through cinemas, but once you are out of cinemas, what do you do with the film? But with streaming, if you go on Netflix now, you will see more than 100 Nigerian contents there. Some of these films are acquired just to stream them in Africa and maybe in the UK, and some of them are acquired for global views. Recently, Netflix released a press statement, announcing that it has just acquired some new films which are being shown. I mean which are acquired as Netflix original. And if the film is Netflix original, it means it is showing globally, it means it is going to be subtitled in like 50 something languages. Interestingly, the pirates still get to copy these films from those platforms and then they put it on YouTube and in some of their own personal websites. I believe it is up to filmmakers to find a way to bring those links down if they can. It’s tough because it is distributed among several links. So, it’s difficult to completely eliminate piracy, but if you are really monetising your film legitimately and you think you have covered a chunk of your revenue, at least you’ll be a bit relaxed, that all you labour is not lost.

What is your take on the view that it’s only the female actors that are breaking even as the number of big girls flaunting their exotic cars and expensive mansions on social media keep rising? What is happening to the men?

Nothing happened to the men. I think a lot of the females in the industry are also entrepreneurs. If you go to their pages or blogs, it’s either they are selling jewellery or they are selling clothing. Does the revenue from those clothing amounts to owning a house? I don’t know, but different people have different ways of structuring deals. For example, some of them are ambassadors to some of these real estates agents. They can do a deal and say okay be our ambassador for five years, this house is N40 million, okay we will give you part cash, part barter and so there are different ways to strike a deal and the male actors like AY and all of those guys are doing well.