NOLLYWOOD RISING: KUNLE AFOLAYAN CLINCHES GLOBAL DEAL WITH NETFLIX, GOES TO LUXOR

Nigeria’s award winning filmaker, Kunle Afolayan has clinched a global distribution deal with Netflix, one of the biggest video sharing website.
Netflix is selling Kunle Afolayan’s latest flick, October 1 and the online sales kicks off in March.

The deal is ranked the first independent film in Africa to be on Netflix. The deal covers subtitling in at least 10 languages with rights to sell in the United Kingdom and United States. October 1 will be subtitled in Spanish and Portuguese, Finnish, Dutch, German, Danish and Norwegian.

The deal, which was wrapped and conveyed to Afolayan on Monday came few hours after he won The Sun Newspapers Man of The Year (Nollywood) and the New Innovator Award.

It is also cheering that October I is available on MNet’s Box 0ffice since December 15, 2014.

“For me , this is a dream come true. Yes, we make films but no credible and certified outlets for sales. No doubt, we are doing well here, a few premiere here and there. But this is an international deal. This is a big exposure and the begininng of a new era for African films.” In the same vein, October 1 will be in competition at the Luxor African Film Festival in March. In the letter of invitation to the award winning filmmaker, the organisers hinted October would screen at the Long Narratives Competition.

October I starring British actors, Nick Rhys, David Baile of the Pirates of The Carribbean, Lawrence Stubbings and Colin David Reese. Leading Nigerian actors in the film include veteran actor, Sodiq Dabba, Kehinde Bankole, Demola Adedoyin, Kayode Olaiyan Femi Adebayo and Ibrahim Chatta.

Netflix, Inc. is a provider of on-demand Internet streaming media available to viewers in all of North America,South America (except Cuba) and parts of Europe (Denmark, Ireland, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, and Germany), and of flat rate DVD-by-mail in the United States, where mailed DVDs are sent via Permit Reply Mail. The company was established in 1997 and is headquartered in Los Gatos, California. It started its subscription-based service in 1999. By 2009, Netflix was offering a collection of 100,000 titles on DVD and had surpassed 10 million subscribers.

As of September 2014, Netflix has subscribers in over 40 countries, with intentions of expanding their services in unreached countries (such as New Zealand and Australia). In January 2013, Netflix reported that it had added two million U.S. customers during the fourth quarter of 2012 with a total of 27.1 million U.S. streaming customers, and 29.4 million total streaming customers. In addition, revenue was up 8% to $945 million for the same period. By the fourth quarter of 2013, Netflix reported 33.1 million U.S. subscribers. By the second quarter of 2014, there were more than 50 million subscribers globally.