So a couple of days ago, I did a tweetstorm on King of Boys that I thought didn’t rise to the level of a blog post.
Basically the point was about how the Gladwell framework was useful to analyse opportunities that showed that apparent disadvantages were really advantages — with King of Boys being a prime example of that.
So I thought about it some more and I realised that it did rise to the level of a blog post because there was another example of the same phenomenon — Film One and Nollywood Cinema.
To begin with — we have to establish the base line — the Top Ten Box Office Titles. Hence the chart below.
You may remember this chart from a few posts ago showing the Top 10 titles over the last three years. I used it as an example to show that the growth in box office looks to be accelerating.
Though of course the chart is now inaccurate because Aquaman is actually going to end up grossing more than Avengers and King of Boys just squeaked by Merry Men.
Anyway back to the this article.
Another point I made was about the growth in Nollywood. Though Nigeria remains a Hollywood market with 60% market share, Nollywood continues to gain ground. I fully expect Nollywood to eventually take 50% of the overall yearly box office and even surpass Hollywood in some years.
Given these prospects, you can imagine there is a lot of increasing interest in Nollywood cinema. Which brings me to the point of my post. If you have any conversation about Nollywood Cinema, one name invariably comes up — Film One.
There’s been a lot of ink spilled by both Film One’s proponents and detractors about the reason why their name comes up. However I posit that the chart below is the main reason why it does —
Film One simply out performs the competition as a distributor of Nollywood films. As you can see of the thirty films that made the list between 2016 and 2018, Film One distributed twenty five of them.
If they weren’t this successful no one would care about them.
So, how did they do it?
How did Film One become so dominant in the Nollywood distribution business?
The answer actually lies not in Nollywood, but in Hollywood. And to show that, let’s look at the chart of the Top Ten Hollywood Box Office over the same period from 2016–2018.
As you can see a different picture emerges. Of the thirty Hollywood films that made the list in between 2016–2018, Film One only distributed nine. They became increasingly important as time went on but they clearly started as also rans in the Hollywood distribution business.
In 2016 (even with The Wedding Party) the Hollywood:Nollywood split was roughly 75:25. So Nollywood wasn’t really important to the distributors in 2016 and you could argue that it didn’t really make any sense to focus on driving it.
However Film One didn’t have a choice. They weren’t really in the Hollywood Business. They had to focus on it, and it ended up making them.
What started off as a disadvantage — Limited Hollywood Films — actually was an advantage because the company needed to focus on distributing Nollywood films. They then became the Nollywood distributor of choice and when the tide rose it lifted their boat very high indeed.
Another interesting thing that comes from looking at the numbers is that Silverbird initially gave Film One a run for their money in the Nollywood distribution game. However they seem to have increasingly focused on Hollywood distribution in the last two years. I hope that they reconsider the strategy and make a big push for Nollywood in 2019 and beyond.
After all no one distributor has the resources to take Nollywood cinema where it needs to be. I even take heart that the dominant Hollywood distributor — Blue Pictures — has started looking seriously at Nollywood but that’s a post for another day.
Anyway that’s me done. It was a blog post after all. Hope you enjoyed it.
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