With millions from Ecobank, one of the big banks in Nigeria with branches across West Africa, four of Nollywood's leading men step out with a project that may revolutionise production and distribution of movies.

Project Nollywood may turn out to be one of the juicy offering to home-video audiences across the country this yuletide. Chico Ejiro, Fidelis Duker, Charles Novia and Fred Amata: the top four directors in the industry have teamed up to form Project Nollywood, a production and distribution company that is modeled after Hollywood's

DreamWorks SKG owned by Stephen Spielberg, Jeffery Katzenberg and David Geffen. They are banking on loans already secured from Ecobank without any collateral other than the movies that have been produced with the money, and a few other corporate supports to kick-start what has been described as "the biggest single company in the sector."

At the MUSON Center, Lagos, recently where few minutes of two of the movies from the initiative were screened to the media and the corporate partners, Project Nollywood attracted a deserved celebration in an industry that is forced to seek new independent sources of funding and bigger distribution networks outside of the stranglehold of the distributor/marketers.

To Novia, whose previous films such as the Missing Angel and the biopic Covenant Church earned critical acclaim, Project Nollywood scores a first as the first in the industry that will have an "accountable distributional network." The idea, he explained was to have the four partners use part of the loan from Ecobank to produce movies of higher standard than already exists in the industry and use part of the finance to ensure wide, auditable distribution of the movies through DVD sales in at least 22 states of the federation.

Duker, whose Senseless, a dramatic foray into domestic violence, was one of the movies previewed that night, said Ecobank's support for the new initiative showed that Nollywood is now being seen as a serious business. "Hollywood and Bollywood are successful because they have the advantage of number in their high population, and they made it first at home before venturing into the global market. With 140 million people and a captive audience, Nollywood is already succeeding at home, and Project Nollywood is all about the next level," said Duker whose annual Abuja international Film festival has become the leading festival celebrating the seventh art in Nigeria after four consistent editions.

MTN, Coca Cola and Unilever's representatives took turn to speak about their involvement with the project and how Nollywood has become a brand that corporate organization could no longer ignore.

Filled with fun, music and dinner, the project Nollywood night also showed just how steadily the professionals in the industry are crossing discovering their latent musical talents. Baritone actor, Larry Koldsweat, rekindled memories of Jazzville club of the early 1990s where he occasionally performed Cardinal rex Lawson's songs. He, however, chose gospel medleys on Tuesday just like actor Sunny McDon, who performed two of his forthcoming debut gospel album, of which he had already shot part of the videos in the resort city of Cannes, France.

Amata's Letters to a stranger, a romantic drama that headlines Genevieve Nnaji alongside a few veterans of the tube and fresh faces was the second movie that was previewed on the night.
The two other from the project, Ejiro's 100 days in the jungle and Novia's Caught in the middle have already been released into the home-video market on DVDs.

Steve Ayorinde