I thought Nollywood was just fun, games – Tonye Princewill

Tonye Princewill has said his perception of Nollywood before he ventured into filmmaking was that the Nigerian film industry better known as Nollywood was just fun and games.
“But it is hard work. These Nollywood people are something else. The foundation they have built is with little or no support from government, yet they’ve put Nigeria on the world map and contributed to increasing our GDP (Gross Domestic Product),” he admitted.
In a recent interview, he described Nollywood as “our cultural ambassadors, our escape, our lives”.
Three industries that work in Nigeria, he said, are banking, religion and Nollywood, albeit with lots of room for improvement. “You just simply have to hand it to them.”
That view, Princewill, who said the toughest part of putting a movie together is getting the money, explained, has dramatically changed; no thanks to new kids on the block like Kunle Afolayan, Izu Ojukwu and a host of others..
He lamented that too many people who can help Nollywood with money do not.
“Too many who can lift the next African Steven Spielberg, the next Spike Lee or the future Oprah Winfrey see them as irrelevant, because they don’t get it. This industry is the next best thing. As politicians become more and more unpopular, less and less news will be watched and more and more movies will give Nigerians the escape they need,” he declared.
He pointed to the fact that entertainers are already becoming more influential than political leaders.
The brands, he said, get this. Nigerians need to get it too as very few industries afford our youth the freedom that this one does. “It speaks to their souls. We all need to understand that,” he said.
Nollywood needs a voice like Princewill’s who also has the financial muscle to back movie projects like 76 that he is putting his weight behind.
76, he said, is a game-changer. “It’s a new chapter in storytelling, and the fact that it is based around real events is even more fascinating. So as a story, we already knew we had something there.”
Most interesting is that this is not the first time he has travelled this road since he worked with Izu Ojukwu on Nnenda. That encounter made it clear that the filmmaker is meticulous, prudent and world class.
“So I knew that with Adonis Production in the lead, nothing could go wrong. That was why I got involved. The movie went over budget, but that was due to changing locations twice and the need to satisfy military protocols. Let’s just say, getting the permission to shoot in the barracks was not as easy as we thought,” he said.