Kunle Afolayan Clears the Air: Netflix Isn’t Leaving Nigeria, Here’s the Truth!
Popular Nollywood filmmaker Kunle Afolayan was speaking at the Zuma International Film Festival where the deduction from what was said was that streaming giant Netflix was leaving Nigeria. As you can imagine, this knd of talk caused panic and a lot of opinions went flying from one end of the nation to the other. But now, in a new interview with Channels Television, Kunle Afolayan is clarifying his words, and clearing the air on what he said especially after Netflix came out to say they are going nowhere. Here’s what Kunle Afolayan is saying now.
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Speaking and clarifying about if Netflix is indeed leaving Nigeria, Kunle Afolayan said:
KUNLE AFOLYAN: If you listen to the entire video, you’ll see that it’s like an 11 minute video and people can always pick things out of context and they can say or just push whatever it is that suits their narrative. I’m one of the key beneficiaries of Netflix and one of the key suppliers, so if Netflix packs their things and they leave, of course it’s going to affect all of us.
Now, what I said at Zuma and I was actually addressing some of the government officials who were there because Victor Okhai is the moderator and Victor was the voice in Nigeria film industry. And Dr. Okhai when he was going to ask the question, he said “look Netflix served a last Supper meal at the events they had in Nigeria.” I wasn’t at that event so I’m not privy to whatever conversation must have happened at the event. Unfortunately I couldn’t be there because I was burying my mother at the time, but I was at the last year one. And I know Netflix will always host people and you can go and listen to most of my interviews especially when it comes to Netflix.
Netflix is an entity, it’s a business entity, it’s a streaming platform just like Hulu, Amazon, HBO and the rest of it and they have their model and all of that. What I said was because of course in the last few months, there’s been a bit of discussion around will they still be doing original or are they still just going to acquire content and there has been that back and forth.
But then I think there has been a bit of change in their structure and mode of operation which of course is very open to a lot of people who supplies them film. And even last time they were here, we had meetings and they’re still reassuring that look we’re still here, we’re going to do stuff, but we might not be able to do the kind of volume that we used to do.
And what I was emphasizing at that meeting was to say look, even if you guys are saying Netflix is not doing enough or Netflix is not taking as much film as they should, why shouldn’t we as a country even come up with other distribution platforms? Just like a lot of people put their films on YouTube, just like okay Amazon said they’re not doing original, but they are still here, they’re still releasing films. And I think this is the same thing because for example, yes Anikulapo has been shot but ‘Recall’ which is our new film, we’re in discussion with Netflix around okay, are they going to license even though it’s not an original?
So if you look at the video, I never said Netflix is leaving Nigeria. Dr Okhai threw the question, he concluded saying Netflix is leaving, and what I said was look now we need to wake up. It’s a wake up call if they are leaving, then we also need to set up our own thing. I heard some people who were not quick enough to make their film, they can’t shoot again because they [Netflix] are cutting down on numbers. But again, Nigeria we like to panic and when we panic, there are people who want to like to coin the story to suit their own narrative.
And of course Netflix also have competitors who would like to put them down. But that is not me cuz I’m a beneficiary of Netflix and you know, it’s vice versa. I give them good content and we have good relationship which we’ve built over the years. So I’ll continue to give them content as long as they are here, and so really, that’s my own take.
