To be honest, this is Kunle Afolayan’s shtick. It’s confessional film-making – where he takes the viewer through the entire process, from the idea to the scripting, to the fund-raising, through every single challenge he faced, up until the movie hits the screens.

By what time, you are completely hooked. You feel this film is as much yours as his. You are committed to it, and to him. You feel protective of this young genius fighting the good fight. It appears nothing is hidden, everything is just there. How can you not support him? We think it’s genius.

And so here he is again. After the roaring success that was The CEO (it wasn’t the best of Afolayan’s work but his name is now gold, and it stayed in the cinema for weeks and weeks and weeks, well done to him), he has come to say on an interview with NET: ‘Please o. It doesn’t mean there is money o’.

And he is of course right. It’s a tragedy that you can be a film maker as nationally popular as Kunle Afolayan, deliver a film that does extremely ell across cinemas and stays longer than the industry average, and yet because we have so few cinemas, and still so many people who will just NOT watch Nollywood films, you may still not make the money back.

We know he says he borrowed N50 million from the Bank of Industry, which is the maximum available for filmmakers under its fund. And it’s at the industry’s lowest interest rates at 10%. Without collateral, we assume in his case since his studio, Golden Effects is one of those four approved by the bank, which use helps you so deal.

And now he says box office takings are about N60 million. Considering the arrangement with Nigerian distributors/cinemas – what filmmakers get progressively short ends of the stick: 50 percent on week 1, and then 40 percent after and then sometimes 30 percent after, he says he probably is getting about N20 million.

So in his inimitable Kunle Afolayan way, he asks you, the viewer, who is with him on this journey: “How am I then supposed to pay back the money from BoI and then get our return on investment?”

But are we the ones that asked him to go and do film?

The thing is still in the cinemas o. But Afolayan has already mounted his PR campaign.

You guys must watch o. Afolayan must make his money back. We are all in this together. We cannot let our golden boy down.

YWriter