Lagos Pirates Feast On Half Of A Yellow Sun Movie

Half of a yellow sun

Half of a yellow sun

Funsho Arogundade

Pirates in Lagos, western Nigeria, have started feasting on multi-million dollar Half of A Yellow Sun, a film that has been described as a landmark in the evolution of the Nigerian film industry.

The movie still showing at Nigerian cinemas has been pirated with thousands of its bootleg DVD copies already being hawked and sold for as low as N150 (about $1) a copy on the streets of Lagos.

P.M.NEWS correspondents observed that the pirated DVD copies of the acclaimed movie are being brazenly hawked in the traffic in Lekki; Maryland; Agidingbi, Ikeja and other major Lagos streets.

“It is tragic that such a film with huge investment could be subjected to such barbaric act in its home country. This is a serious breach of our copyright and it is very sad not for us alone but the Nigerian movie industry as a whole,” Moses Babatope, an executive with The Film One Distribution, the sole distributor of Half of A Yellow Sun in Nigeria, told P.M.NEWS.

A scene from Half Of A Yellow Sun
A scene from Half Of A Yellow Sun

According to Babatope, “we have already taken steps to deal with this issue by forwarding our petition to the Inspector General of Police and the Censors Board so as to take action and even criminalise it should anyone be caught with the pirated copy.”

Half of A Yellow Sun, is the most expensive Nigerian film since the emergence of the phenomenal Nollywood. Its production gulped over $10 million (N1.6 billion) and was largely financed by private funds raised by Yewande Sadiku, CEO, Stanbic-IBTC Capital Limited, who also doubles as the film’s executive producer.

The investment banker, P.M.NEWS learnt, also got a loan from the $200 million Entertainment Intervention Fund of the Nigerian Creative and Entertainment Industry Stimulation Loan Scheme, NCEILS, run by the Bank of Industry in Nigeria, before the movie could be completed.

It was premiered at the 38th annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2013. The film also screened at other international film festivals with both public and private premieres in the UK and Nigeria, followed by commercial screenings at cinemas in the UK and other few western countries.

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The film was also released on DVD for UK market after its cinema screening was closed in the country.

The public screening was controversially delayed for months in Nigeria by the National Film and Video Censors Board, NFVCB until mid-July when it got the much awaited approval among 77 movies and rated “18”.

But following months of delays by Nigeria’s Censors Board, the movie illegally found its way into the internet when it was posted on YouTube and later dubbed into CD and DVD copies by pirates who are now hawking them on streets of Lagos.

This has fuelled fears that the producers may not recoup their investment. But Babatope allayed the fears, saying “Half of A Yellow Sun’ is doing well right now at the cinemas. While I will not want to reveal to you the figure, it is very encouraging as the film is topping the box office record. And it’s on its third week,” he said.

Babatope thus called on Nigerians to shun the pirates and troop out to the cinemas to see the movie so as to encourage more investment in the film industry.

“The Nigerian film industry has been grappling with the issue of piracy for years but to now have such an important film like Half of A Yellow Sun considered the most expensive Nigerian film ever made, fall victim to piracy before its even released properly in Nigeria, is another harsh reminder of the size of the piracy problem in Nollywood. The issue may be so widespread now that it will be difficult to imagine any real positive progress in the short term,” he said

Half of a Yellow Sun is an adaption of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s award-winning international novel of the same title. The movie set in the Biafran war era in Nigeria, focuses on love, lust, jealousy, greed and brings to light the effects of war on the lives of everyone it touches.

Written and directed by Biyi Bandele, Half of a Yellow features Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Anika Noni Rose, Onyeka Onwenu, Genevieve Nnaji, O.C. Ukeje and Zack Orji.

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