Nigerian comedian and filmmaker Basketmouth has accused Nollywood producers of mismanaging funds allocated by global streaming platforms, claiming this has negatively impacted the quality of Nigerian films.
Speaking in a recent interview on Arise TV, Basketmouth alleged that many producers divert substantial portions of the budgets provided for movie production for personal use, leaving only a fraction for actual filmmaking.
“When the streaming platforms came in, they gave money to these producers, and I’ll tell you point blank: these producers would take the money—$1.5 million or whatever they give them—and use about 10% of that money to make the movie,” he said.
Basketmouth claimed that the alleged malpractice led streaming platforms to intervene by paying actors directly to ensure transparency. However, he accused producers of finding ways to exploit the system further by coercing actors to return part of their pay.
“Even to the point where the streaming platforms stepped in and said, ‘You know what? We are going to be paying the actors directly,’ these guys would still go behind and tell the actors to pay half of that money back to them. You can verify the information anywhere,” he added.
The comedian argued that this mismanagement has resulted in substandard productions, particularly in the epic genre, where films often fall short of global standards.
“When you do that and expect your movie to be 100%, it can’t. It’s impossible. But these guys? They’ll cut, buy houses, buy cars. And that’s why when you see our movies, some of our epic movies look like stage plays,” Basketmouth lamented.
