“As much as people want to escape from the horrors of daily living, as much as people want to laugh and enjoy watching fantasy stories in the Cinemas, the time has come to start telling our true stories”
Obi Emelonye- Nollywood Film maker
Award winning Nollywood film maker Obi Emelonye is set to make a controversial biopic about Former head of State IBB that could put his life and career on the line.
Obi Emelonye is popular for Nollywood’s highest grossing movie of 2012 Last flight to Abuja and award-winning movie featuring Genevieve Nnaji Mirror boy.
He is now set to take Nollywood into uncharted territory with his new movie titled Badamasi– a biopic about ex-military head of state Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida.
Obi Emelonye confirmed he chose to do a Biopic on IBB because he is perceived as the most controversial Nigerian leader , allegedly involved in a civil war, several coups, for and against, and topped it up with an intriguing and fascinating political drama of June 12.
The new movie took the Ace Nollywood producer seven years to produce it…watch trailer
According to the film maker – the movie will be a critical, objective and an almost antagonist view of IBB’s regime.
He had started writing the script based on information available in the public domain. But needed to have a personal perspective from the man himself about his own life and significantly, about his time in office
To this end he gave IBB an opportunity to tell his side of the story – he sat with him through many late-night visits. According to him, the ex-general spoke emotionally, giving an account of the things that took place- from his perspective
Inspite of IBB’s cooperation, it was difficult making a biopic about a living man and controversial leader
The first huddle was getting authorization from IBB himself to use his name and story.
The second hurdle was freedom to tell the story- without allowing the IBB team to hijack the project for ulterior motives.
This is the first time a biopic of this nature is to be done in Nollywood and I believe we need to get it right so that other projects will emerge in the future to tell the stories of our journey to nationhood with credibility and fearlessness
Obi Emelonye
Even though IBB told his story, he had to deal with his large legal representatives who were hoping to take advantage of this opportunity to tell his story on the platform of film, with universal and unrivalled reach; without leaving him vulnerable to malicious interpretation or far-fetched extrapolation of a filmmaker’s creative license.
It took almost one year of legal wrangling to clear the path for him to proceed with his story, now the trailer is out, he has been forbidden from releasing the movie into the Cinemas
Multiple reports have surfaced that the movie release is being delayed due to threats to his life – The movie it seems have ruffled the feathers of many powerful people in the country
Lead actor E n y i n n a N w i g w e confirmed this on his Instagram page
Death threats over #Badamasi movie??? 😳
So apparently director @obiemelonye is being threatened over his work BADAMASI: Portrait Of
A General
Are we still at this point as a people? A film director can’t
tell a story about our history anymore?? Wow! I can only hope this is just a
bunch of mischief makers, makes no darn sense in today’s world of story
telling. Rightly quoted “They can only win the battle but not the war” Realms
will always quake before greatness births… #WeHangInThere 👨🏾✈️ “A generation which ignores history has
no past and no future.” #RobertHeinlein
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