Nollywood Has Nothing Else To Prove To The World – Bob Manuel Udokwu

Nollywood actor, Bob Manuel Udokwu has come out to react to the casting of British actor, Idris Elba as Okonkwo in the forthcoming adaptation of Chinua Achebe’s classic novel, Things Fall Apart.

He recently had his say as a guest on The Morning Brief, and fans have been reacting.

According to him, the reality is that Nigeria has top-class actors in the country who can play the Okonkwo role better than Idris, especially because they know where the story is coming from.

Bob added that Nollywood has come of age, and we no longer have to do much to prove anything to the world.

His words, “Collaboration. I said this years ago that Nollywood has come of age; now we don’t have to do much to prove to the world that we have world-class talent here.

There’s this conversation about Idris Elba being cast as Okonkwo in the Hollywood make of Things Fall Apart and I don’t have anything against that as an actor but I think that we have people who are top-class actors in Nigeria who can play that role better knowing where that story is coming from but that’s another story for another day.

What Nollywood needs now is collaboration and it’s beginning to happen. I happen to be part of another production that involves to major actors in India and another Hollywood-based actress. We need to have more collaborations with our counterparts in Europe and north America and it’s happening gradually. The bundle of talents we have in Nigeria is awesome.”

WOW.

Nollywood is a sobriquet that originally referred to the Nigerian film industry. The origin of the term dates back to the early 2000s, traced to an article in The New York Times. Due to the history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed-upon definition for the term, which has made it a subject to several controversies.

The origin of the term “Nollywood” remains unclear; Jonathan Haynes traced the earliest usage of the word to a 2002 article by Matt Steinglass in the New York Times, where it was used to describe Nigerian cinema.

Charles Igwe noted that Norimitsu Onishi also used the name in a September 2002 article he wrote for the New York Times. The term continues to be used in the media to refer to the Nigerian film industry, with its definition later assumed to be a portmanteau of the words “Nigeria” and “Hollywood”, the American major film hub.

Film-making in Nigeria is divided largely along regional, and marginally ethnic and religious lines. Thus, there are distinct film industries – each seeking to portray the concern of the particular section and ethnicity it represents. However, there is the English-language film industry which is a melting pot for filmmaking and filmmakers from most of the regional industries.