A Nigerian actress and movie producer, Toyin Abraham Adeyemi, has revealed that it took her just two months to produce her alleged N500 million budget movie, Malaika.
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She made this revelation during a chat with the media while addressing the disturbing thread of piracy in the Nollywood industry.
A victim of piracy herself, Toyin, as she simply called, lamented how her N500 million budget movie was leaked on Telegram and how she was able to salvage it with the help of her team.
“If you look at me, I’m actually not okay. I’ve to come from the hospital; I’ve been having panic attacks. It’s not easy shooting a movie for close to N500 million and just seeing it out there.
“I saw my movie and another movie, and I thought I was dreaming, and they said, ‘No, you’re not dreaming,'” she said.
She went on to disclose that the hackers announced on Telegram that they were going to upload the movie by 12, which they eventually did.
When asked how long it took her to produce the movie, Toyin responded that it took her almost two months.
“I shot Malaika for two months, almost two months,” she replied.
By a comparative analysis, on average, Hollywood studio movies are shot within 30 to 120 days, with outliers falling below or above this range. The length of principal photography depends greatly on the scale, genre, and length of a film.
“Lift,” the new Kevin Hart-led heist thriller now streaming on Netflix, took approximately five months; between March and July 2022 to be precise, for filming with a $100 million budget.
Toyin further disclosed that her advocacy against movie piracy isn’t about her interests alone but for the general good of the industry.
“This is not about Malaika or any movie in the cinema; it is not about tribe. It’s about the creative industry; it’s about the entertainment industry. Because this is the only thing we do,” she stated.
Ojelabi, the publisher of Freelanews, is an award winning and professionally trained mass communicator and a recipient of the D9112 Superstar Icon Award, who writes ruthlessly about pop culture, religion, politics and entertainment.
