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In an interview with Channels TV, he elaborated on his recent project, ‘Lisabi,’ a historical epic that portrays the legendary Yoruba hero's resistance against the Oyo empire.
The film, penned by Lateef Adedimeji and directed by Akinmolayan, made its debut on Netflix last week.
During the discussion, Akinmolayan recognized that streaming services like Netflix have inspired Nigerian filmmakers to create high-quality content, leading to increased revenue.
Nevertheless, he emphasized the need for the government to collaborate with these platforms to establish a physical presence in Nigeria, thereby promoting local talent and facilitating knowledge transfer.
“Netflix excites you to make good movies because you know it is going to generate a bit of income. You spend more. You spend more on technical quality and spend more on a lot of things. You have to train people to do the work. And what it does is that it improves everybody’s life on that chain,” he said.
“We are going to have a problem when they decide to pull out. As a country, we have not positioned ourselves to succeed with or without them.
“We should be growing the cinema culture not shutting it down. It makes no sense. In every other part of the world, cinema is rising. We should not say streamers are here let us stay away from cinemas. We should look out for local streaming, and distribution opportunities.
“The Nigerian government needs to be very intentional. The government can say ‘Netflix we love what you are doing. We are not going to tax you too much. But you have to establish something here in terms of the number of people to work with locally. You have to set up shop here’.
“While tons of people are working, there is knowledge transfer.”
Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Showmax are the leading streaming platforms in Nigeria, demonstrating substantial investment in the film sector.
In the previous year, Netflix announced that it had invested more than $23 million and secured licenses for 283 titles in Nollywood from 2016 to 2023.