The General Manager of popular mainland Cinema, Ozone Cinemas at Yaba, Patrick Lee, has hinted in a recent interview why getting gross earnings of films showing at the Cinemas in Nigeria has not been possible.

Patrick said that stakeholders in the make-believe industry in Nigeria still have not agreed at a consensus format for the ratings as applicable in Hollywood. He posited that, “for the past 2 – 3 years now, we have been trying to get a format that would be acceptable and assessable to every one but we have not arrived at one yet, but we would get there”.

Lee further stated that, “It is very important because they (the filmmakers) need to know how their films are doing at the cinemas, the movie Producers need these statistics to prepare a good business plan for getting investors in Nollywood for funding”.

“We would hopefully before the end of this year, have a round table talk with all the stakeholders to arrive at one. But we might look at the number of people who buy the movie tickets as one of the criteria for getting the gross earning that would be accepted to investors, movie producers, journalists, the public and so on” he said.

Concluding, Patrick said, “by the time we are done, would get a website to post these figures in, we really need these figures, it would help Nollywood”, he concluded.

The movie industry in Nigeria has been without the public knowing the best rated films as we have it in Hollywood. The producers too have not helped matters as they also inflate cost of film production figures to suit them. We are hopeful that very soon; Nigerians would be able to access gross earnings of movies released in Nigeria.

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