The Media Blog: We don’t get too excited at TMB, but ‘The Wedding Party’ has us excited with a capital ‘E’

Expensive? Yes. Glossy? It’s Mo Abudu, so yes. Star-studded? Like-from-RMD-to-Frank-Donga yes. A-delicious-trailer? Yes-Yes-Yes-Yes-Yes-Yes.

The trailer for ‘The Wedding Party’ – the fresh new film from EbonyLife TV is out and it took us some time to really look and decide if the excitement we feel is appropriate for the world-weariness that’s our signature tone on this blog.

We are almost ashamed at how excited we are at. Almost.

It has been a roller coaster two months of shooting across locations in Lagos, cast members telling us legendary tales of Kemi Adetiba’s champagne glass that you touched only at risk to your life and limb and finally the movie with Banky W as male lead is set to roll through the Toronto Film Festival this quarter and on to its premiere in Lagos in December.

Written by playwright, Tosin Otudeko, “The Wedding Party” is executive produced by Mo Abudu, Moses Babatope, Chris Jeyibo and Naz Onuzo.

Onuzo of course is the man who has produced such delightful films as last year’s critical success ‘Out of Luck’ and who is obviously obsessed with Adesua Etomi enough to cast her as lead character (or something very close to lead) in every single one of his movies including The Arbitration opening this week, and of course The Wedding Party.

Onuzo is a prolific film-maker when you think of New Nollywood, producing at least one well-thought-out film a year. None has broken through to the mainstream so this is a huge chance for him – so that Nigerians finally know his name, and with it credit for movies which, even if they are not exactly the best anyone can do, are much better than what you find in the rest of the stream.

The Wedding Party is a complex construction though – produced by a collaboration of EbonyLife Films, FilmOne Distribution (which apparently has endless funds to do everything in the world this year, more on that in other blogposts), Koga Studios and Inkblot Productions. So it’s not exactly an EbonyLife film (the next wholly EL film is Kongi’s Harvest adapted from the Wole Soyinka book of same name) but it does everyone good for it to be so presented after last year’s huge Fifty success.

Fifty, of course, got mixed critical reactions from Nigerians last year – chief of which was the lack of an actual story. But it was a commercial blowout. The cinemas were full with Nigerians nonetheless impressed with luscious production values. And something tells us that on the strength of that reputation, the ELTV-scale hype, and what we see from this trailer, there will be a repeat of Fifty-level hysteria.

And we just can’t wait to feast our eyes on ears on the sights and screams of the eternal Sola Sobowale.

 

PS: See anything worth talking about on the ins and outs of the media business in Nigeria on TV, radio, print and online (could be news, tweets, photos, opeds etc) send us a mail on [email protected] titled TMB. Let’s share the insight together!

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