by Cheta Nwanze

Nollywood Producer and Director, Kunle Afolayan is momentarily delighted, as he says Nigerians have responded positively to the release on his new movie, ‘October 1.

The film maker recently premièred his psychological thriller flick, ‘October 1’, written by Tunde Babalola, which features veteran actor, Sadiq Daba in the lead role.

YNaija caught up with Afolayan, who says ‘the hard work that went into the film project is paying off’.

He said, “The response has been really good and I think Nigerians have responded to it very well, for which I’m very glad. Most of the reviews have been positive, and the hard work is paying off. A lot of hard work went into this movie like all the previous movies that I’ve done. I try to pay as much attention to detail as possible in my films because people don’t do that we’ll here. When people ask me how I feel, I tell them that I don’t feel anything because I saw this coming.”

Afolayan said it was possible for a Nigerian movie to gross up to $1million (N164,270,000) if the right distribution framework is in place and good cinemas are available. He would also harp on the lingering issue of piracy.

“I’m trying to break the issue of distribution and I think we are cracking that because we now have 16 cinemas. I’ve also been contacted by Netflix which is a big boost. Piracy in Nigeria cannot be totally eradicated. But I think the solution is when we have different distribution windows and more cinemas. If we have good cinemas, we will be able to Nigerian movies gross up to $1 million. Once a movie is out on DVD that’s it, so my hope is to break even on the silver screen.”

Speaking of the ancient setting of the October 1 movie, he says the aim was to educate and enlighten people about the past, present and future.

“For me the motivation to shoot the film is to educate the people, where we were, and where we are now. Everyone needs to go back to history. Let’s identify the problems and know where we are going to,” he added.

Kolapo Olapoju