Bloomberg Businessweek - USA (2019-05-27)

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GORDON/

THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX (2); SVEN TORFINN/PANOS PICTURES/REDUX (2).

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Edited by

James E. Ellis

and David Rocks

● Thankstostreaming,

Nigeria’sfilmindustrycould

finallygetitsglobal close-up

InDecember2018,EbonyLifeFilms,a studioin

Lagos,Nigeria,premieredChiefDaddy, a feature-

length drama about an eccentric billionaire who

dies suddenly, touching off a madcap scramble

among his relatives over his estate. The movie was

an immediate hit with audiences in Nigeria. By the

end of the month it had emerged as the country’s

most popular theatrical release of the year.

Not long ago the economic life cycle of Chief

Daddy might have ended there. Nollywood, the

nickname for Nigeria’s robust film industry,

has long been hamstrung by piracy. For years

filmmakershave watched withfrustrationas

swarmsofillegitimateDVDsquicklyoverwhelmed

theirpromisingcinematicefforts,slashingpoten-

tialprofitsandmakingit difficulttoraisemoney to

produce future films.

But in the spring of 2019 the makers of Chief

Daddy managed to cash in on a new window of

opportunity, this time online. EbonyLife sold the

movie’s global streaming rights to Netflix Inc., for

an undisclosed sum. In March the streaming ser-

vice made the movie available to 149 million cus-

tomers in 190 countries, most of whom live well

beyond the reach of those pirated DVDs.

“As a continent, Africa has remained creatively

silent for centuries, our stories are seldom told

outside of our families and villages and often from

the perspective of someone looking in,” says Mo

Abudu, chief executive officer of EbonyLife. The

Nollywood