Moses Inwang: Distribution Still 

Major Challenge in Movie Industry

Filmmaker Moses Inwang is not your run-of-the-mill producer. As an active player in the industry, Inwang has earned his stripes with over two decades’ experience. To his credit are critically acclaimed movies like ‘The Last 3 Digits’, ‘Alter Ego’, ‘Stalker’, ‘Body Language’, ‘Cold Feet’, ‘Merry Men 3’, and ‘Blood Vessel’. Inwang takes Ferdinand Ekechukwu through his journey as a filmmaker/director; reflects on his craft, and offers tips on what drives movie’s commercial success. Excerpt:

Can you briefly take us through your journey as a filmmaker/director with over two decades in the industry?

My journey as a filmmaker started in 1998; I started taking an interest in writing scripts. Even though I didn’t have any professional training at that time, I just found myself writing stories and trying to do screenplay. I wanted to get these screenplays into the hands of whichever producers I could reach. So I tried to reach out to Zeb Ejiro. I went to his office, but that didn’t work out. They threw me out (burst into laughter). Then I went to the ECOWAS Hotel, where I met with Frank Ubaka. That was the first guy I met in the industry and he just put me through the happenings in the industry. He encouraged me to take an acting class, which I tried to, but I realised I had zero interest. I took an acting class, went for an audition, scaled through to the top, and was good for the role. But I didn’t show up to take the role. They were looking for me. At the time, there were no mobile phones. The following year, 1999, Frank and I made a film titled, “Two Good Men” starring Tony Umez, Steph Nora Okere, Ernest Obi, and it was a good film at the time. That was really how I stepped into the industry.

Can you talk about your experience and understanding of the industry with regards to the impact on your works?

This is a bit technical. My experience and understanding of the industry from the point of an industry practitioner and our local audience, largely, I think, from the audience perspective, they care more about the hype you give to a film than the actual quality of the film. Because for me, I have chosen my titles, my films, the productions I have worked on based on how impactful I thought it would be on the audience, how socially relevant, how incredible I thought the genre was how entertaining I thought it was. But in my journey in this industry, 25 years of being a filmmaker, I have seen that it’s not even what you put into the film that gives you that commercial success, it’s not the how well you’ve made the film, it’s how much you’ve made noise about the film which is fair to be honest because everything needs promotion for it to go big. But it’s a little bit over the top in Nigeria because they don’t care about the quality of the film as long as you can dance, make noise, that’s what attracts them to the film rather than just putting out your trailer and let people see how interesting this film promises to be and they go see it, no. They want something extra, they want that hype. I don’t think it’s fair to have to put filmmakers through that. Not every filmmaker can descend so low to that level – extra stuff just to attract the audience. That’s from the audiences’ perspective. I don’t think genre or quality of a film has anything to do with their interest. I’m not talking about everybody. I know there some people who want to watch quality films, you know but the rest of them when they see quality films they ignore it because it doesn’t come with the right hype. They want the one that has more hype. It’s rather an unfortunate situation. From the industry perspective, my experience has also been a lot of us want to dwell on our inadequacies as an industry and as individual filmmakers. Yes, we don’t have the right budget to make the right kind of films that we should be making to compare with the likes of Hollywood and Bollywood and other industries. But we’ve seen a lot of us being comfortable with that. Because I have seen filmmakers who got very good budget to make films, they still made low-quality films because they have gotten so comfortable with the small-scale films that they weren’t even prepared to make large-scale films. That’s that. We’ve gotten used to mediocrity. And it’s so bad that when you are trying to get things right, they tag you a time-waster. All of those incredible films you see from Hollywood and from Bollywood and from wherever they didn’t rush to shoot those films, they didn’t shoot them in six days. They took their time in preproduction, in prepping for those things, and they took their time to get the shots, to build their sets, to get the right equipment, to setup the equipment to film it. They took their time in getting everything done. It didn’t just appear out of the blue. That is time, film is time. And time is money. It means that money affords you the time to make a good film and to tell a good story. I have seen movies that were so rushed you could see it in the pictures, but when it comes to the premiere, you will see the best red carpet will start from here to the next street. They set up for the red carpet, the costume, the razzmatazz, the music, everything. The premiere obviously would cost more than the film. So we are losing it as an industry. If we can’t put as much effort as we put into making films as we put into other things, then we are losing it. I keep saying it that you cannot rush a film, if you take a shortcut, it will reflect in the film, it’s as simple as that. The earlier we understand this we start treating our stories proper.

What project are you working on?

Currently I’m working on “OP”, which I’ve been working on for 2 years now. It’s an 8-part series, a Fortress Studios production, which I started in 2023. I wanted to create a new company not just a production company but a studio. So Fortress Studios is a production and distribution company. We distributed films to Prime Video and to Netflix. And then we are also making some amazing films. Our first project was ‘Dead Serious’ which was a Showmax Original and this one also going to be acquired by Netflix as an Original. “OP” is going to be the biggest series you are going to see out of Africa.

You have been part of some blockbuster movies. Are there secrets to making such movies in Nollywood?

Yes, there are secrets to making movies in Nollywood. Preparation is key; preparation and having the right crew. I think practitioners undermine that a lot. They go for the cheaper alternative. But look the guy that is charging you N4 million knows exactly why they are charging that. And the fact that they are walking away from the project if you are not paying for it means that they know exactly what they are coming to do, and they know that they need that money to achieve it and all that money is worth their time. You walk away from that, going for the next person that is going to take N1 million just a wrong move. You’d rather just not do that project than get the wrong crew. Because the wrong crew they are going to give you the wrong departmental requirement for each production. If you don’t get the right makeup, if you don’t get the right set design, if you don’t get the right props person, if you don’t get the right cinematographer; cinematographer is key. Your picture is going to go from looking like this film to looking like that film just because you chose the wrong guy. Get the crew right, preproduction is everything. I’m not even going to talk about production because it feels like you prepare so much for production but we don’t know that these other things are the most important.  

What type of story do you feel you haven’t explored enough and would want to in the coming years?

As a filmmaker, thriller is my go-to genre. And then thriller is a combination of some of the other genres. I’m a thriller person. I love thrillers. Of course, I have done other genres in my career. I don’t think I have done enough historical films; I don’t think I have done any epics at all. I’m working on one: it’s huge. It’s going to take a whole year to prepare for. We are still in conversation about doing one.  Yes, so look out for that, I’m also working on a historical film as well.

Has there been a situation where you had to compromise your creative decisions just so to accommodate a producer or executive producer’s influence? 

Yes, and no. There are always situations where the film’s budget cannot accommodate my creative decision in the moment and sometimes you have to be smart about it, especially when it’s a fresh idea. But I try not to come up with new ideas on set that weren’t part of the original plan which is why preproduction is key. But again when it gets to a point even though the idea was part of the original plan, it gets to a point where you look at the producer and the country and say, ‘look, we cannot achieve this again.’ I think that’s part of your responsibility as a filmmaker in Nigeria to be able to adapt, but you have to adapt creatively. You must have a plan B for every decision you make as a director in Nollywood. You must have it at the back of your mind somewhere that, ‘Oh we want to explode four cars; we cannot afford this.’ You must have a plan B to do something that is equally spectacular that is pleasing to the story and the script but cheaper for the production to accommodate. Yes, you must have had those instances where in order to adapt, to compromise, to be honest and just take it a notch step lower than what I intended to do. And what I also try to do is this other alternative, let’s make sure is as spectacular as entertaining as possible. That’s how to keep it together, keep the story together, and make sure it tells the story, most importantly. And make sure that the next alternative is not from point one to point 76 because there’s always going to be financial issues, it’s not a rarity in filmmaking. Because of all the unforeseen occurrences, the budget might not be able to accommodate. So when you get to the latter part of the production deed where the budget is running thin I think it’s expected of the director to be more corporative with the producer or the executive producer to make sure you get to the finish line. You can’t be having big ideas when there’s actually no money to achieve them. So decision is, are you going to finish this project or are you going to let it go? So it’s a two-way street, you have to consider your producer, and you also have to consider making sure that we are here to make this film, we are not here to always consider what we don’t have. We are here to achieve, especially when it’s part of the original plan of the project. I’m not going to go on set and start compromising every scene just to accommodate your lack of funds.

Funding has been said by filmmakers to be a huge challenge. does that apply to you?

Funding has always been a challenge to every filmmaker, in fact, every filmmaker globally. I’ve read something from Steven Spielberg (Hollywood) where he said he still has to go and fight for funds for making films at his level. He’s a billionaire, but he still has to go out and seek the funding for films. So it’s still a challenge for everyone. It’s even worse in Nigeria, where not a lot of people care about the art, neither do people care about filmmaking as a business, and also some of the filmmakers have not been professional enough to keep some of the investors already here to keep them in the industry. There have been a lot of issues with film funds not being properly utilised. And of course, it continues to be a challenge. But for me, I think I’ve been fairly lucky in that regard. I feel like every time I have decided that I want to make this film I always end up making it partly because I put a lot of my money on it and then get other partners. And partly because sometimes people just come to me because they have seen other films that I have made. And I always, always get these people. I always, always get those kinds of calls like ’let’s make a film, I have this money, I just want to make a film with you’. And I think I’ve been lucky enough to always get that kind of calls come my way. But I’m very much aware that investment in film is still a bane in our industry.    

How about distribution?

Distribution is another big problem that we have. I think it’s the biggest problem of all in our industry. It’s the biggest problem. But with Netflix and Amazon Prime closing shops in Nigeria the problem just got way bigger. People are reverting to the cinemas but we all know the problem that the cinema distribution comes with. And I really hope that we are able to get around and talk about these problems and find a way to resolving them. We are in the process of doing that. Some months ago, we had a meeting with Netflix in their Amsterdam office, and I think it was a positive one. We need all of the distribution channels that we can get. Nollywood is a vibrant industry, people just want to make art, just want to make films. There’s a lot of production going on, there are a lot of films already made and seeking distribution. So we need everybody, anybody that is a streaming platform, that is a theatrical platform, any form of distribution channel we need all of them… all of them.

Finally, is it all work, work for Moses or work, work and unwind?

I unwind, yeah, but not a lot in the last couple of years because of my project “OP”. I think the project has taken away a large portion of my social life because this project is everything. I have given my all to this project. I find a way to unwind. I like singing, I like doing karaoke, and you know I’m actually a singer professionally, I ditched that for filmmaking. I like playing football. I also ditched football for filmmaking, but I still like playing football. I play football two to three times every week. I recently got injured and had to have surgery and everyone thought that was the end of my amateur football career. But now I’m back to playing football. I hangout a lot of times too and I find time these days just generally I like to travel too. You just have to keep the balance. All work and no play you say…