The popular Nigerian comedian, Bright Okpacha, popularly called Basket Mouth has exposed how Nigerian movie producers do not focus on producing quality movies, rather, they are interested in using money for production for their luxuries.
While speaking on the Morning Show programme on Arise News TV, on his movie, “A Ghetto Love Story”, Basket mouth pointed out that unprofessional behaviors of producers are the reason Nigeria epic movies lack quality and look more like Stage Play.
According to him, more than 70 percent of Producers use money meant for movie production to buy cars and houses.
“There is a lot of money in the movie industry. When the streaming platforms came, they gave money to producers to produce movies, but producers used only ten percent of that money to make the films. They are listening. They cannot deny it.”
“I don’t want to mention names, but they know themselves”
Basket Mouth added, that the corruption in the industry got to the point where the streaming platforms decided to be paying the actors directly, yet, the producers will still go behind the streaming platforms, demanding from the actors, half of what they were paid.
Speaking on his Debut movie, “A Ghetto Love Story”, Basketmouth said that he made the movie to create excellence because he felt that Nigerian movies could be better.
“Most movie makers want to make movies to make money. For then, it is an investment. They want to put in N200m or N150m to make N1b. That’s what they do.”
“When your intention is to make money, without knowing it, you are already cutting down your budget because you don’t want to exceed your budget, and by so doing, you are scaling down on the substance of the movie.”
“In my case, I didn’t make the movie to make money – I made the movie to create art and for excellence.”
Answering questions on the budget of the movie, Basketmouth revealed that A Ghetto Love Story cost more than N500m.
Basketmouth said he assembled the best team for the movie because he did not want to compromise the quality, which is the reason for the great quality of the movie.
The Witter of the movie and a TV Presenter, Victoria Eze popular called Miss Vic, added that the movie deviated from the usual stories that revolve around the upper class and focused on the ghetto way of life while keeping excellence in mind, with the intent to shake up the industry.
Responding to questions on whether the photographs of Basketmouth and her released on social media by Basketmouth is just for the movie or something more intimate, Miss Vic said that “two truths can exist at the same time”.
A Ghetto Love Story written by Victoria Eze, produced by Basketemouth, and directed by Daniel Oriaha is Basketmouth’s debut movie.
