In recent years, the Nigerian movie industry, Nollywood has been placing emphasis on the quality of movies produced. Those efforts have not gone unnoticed as popular American online streaming platform, Netflix has acquired a number of Nollywood movies.
Netflix, which had previously acquired Lionheart, Wedding party, Chief Daddy and Mokalik, amongst others has now added three movies to its platform. These movies are The Wedding Party 2, King of Boys and Merry men. It did not come as a surprise that Netflix chose the movies as they are some of the highest-earning movies in the country.
Reason for the acquisition: As announced by the company’s Vice President of international originals, Erik Barmack, Netflix has continued its quest to deliver original contents to its African subscribers, and the acquisition is part of the American streaming giant’s $15 billion budget set out to get original content globally.
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What you should know: It is pertinent to note that the only Nigerian movie the global streaming giant has purchased its worldwide rights is Lionheart produced by Genevieve Nnaji as the licenses of other Nollywood movies were acquired by Netflix only after they had been screened in local cinemas.
About Netflix: Netflix Inc. is an American media services founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, with its headquarters in Los Gatos, California.
Netflix is a subscription-based streaming OTT service which offers online streaming of a library of films and television programmes, including those produced in-house.
According to reports, Netflix as of April 2019 had over 148 million paid subscriptions worldwide, including 60 million in the United States, and over 154 million subscriptions total, including free trials.
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Netflix has offered lots of original contents on its site since 2012. By January 2016, its services operated in more than 190 countries and released an estimated 126 original series and films the same year, more than any other network channel.