CASINO, another genre unveiled
Shile Ibironke, the managing director of Micromedia Marketing Limited, a content acquisition, production and distribution organization, combines talent and beauty. Her entry into the growing film industry, estimated at over N853.9bn value, is with disruptive innovation. She is creating a new market and value network in the entertainment market which has risen to fifth contributor to Nigeria’s rebased $510 billion GDP.
Through Micromedia, Shile and her team are trying to change the perspective and quality of film products in the local and international markets as she produces high quality genre of films with classy standard for cinemas and TV series. Currently her films are not dubbed in conventional commercial CDs.
Her first film was ‘Taste of Love’ which according to her was the first tele novella ever produced in Nigeria. “Taste of Love which also came in 150 episodes on TV has been successful and currently it is being distributed on Africa Magic show case. It is also on AIT network and Silverbird. Taste of Love has also gone outside Nigeria and we are currently distributing in Francophone regions”, Micromedia said.
The company’s latest and sophomore entry is called CASINO, an award winning film that tells and brings to limelight the story of struggle for power and money, socio political issues, current affairs and infedility in the homes.
To produce and maintain international standard, Micromedia, according to Shile invested heavily in the CASINO production. It was a masterstroke that many may not believe it was shot in Nigeria but according Shile the film was shot in Ibadan, Oyo State for a period of weeks.
The vision of CASINO is quality, not just from the cameras used but quality of the story and its relativity with the Nigerian culture. “The brief is to avoid dirty environment because at the end of the day whatever is produced and put outside there, translates to the local environment called Nigeria. The objective of the production was also to sell Nigeria as a must visit destination for tourists. It is like a revolution in us to sell Nigeria to the world with the best quality and best content” Shile told BusinessDay at the unveiling of the film in Lagos.
Casino is movie series that Shile said Micromedia is proud to launch in to the Nigerian market. “Aside from it being a movie series, we have decided to create a 90 minute movie version of Casino which will be released in series. We are not only putting it in the tube as a TV series, but we are also releasing it as a movie which will be distributed across different cinemas in Nigeria and outside the country. We are also going to have a series that will show weekly on TV stations and mobile. What we do in Micromedia is that we have a forte for distribution and we go from TV, Mobile and video on demand”, she said.
The film stars best cast including Zack Orji, Funsho Adeolu, Tony Umez, Mofe Duncan, Ireti Osayemi Bakare, Ayo Adesanya, Lola Savage, Tina Mba, Omowunmi Dada among others.
Of course, funding such project that has the purpose of providing content for entertainment and selling Nigeria as a brand requires deep pocket. Shile recognized this when she said “it is highly impossible to stand alone. A lot of our funding comes from seeking loans from banks. We are a marketing organization and believe in the distribution of the content, so we have a long term plan of what the content would generate in the long run”, she said.
On his experience, Zack Orji gave the film thumps up as he said “It was a great production with great team spirit. The story is a challenging one as it mirrors the political consolidation that is taking place in Nigeria with all intrigues, power play and godfatherism that is happening in Nigeria’s politics. It was well written and very high production quality”.
Daniel Obi