It’s a major week for Nollywood!
You know what, scratch that! It’s a HISTORIC week for Nollywood.
Nollywood’s most expensive film, The Black Book, is currently No. 1 on Netflix worldwide in less than a week of its release. This is the first ever Nollywood film to achieve such a feat.
The Black Book | Official Trailer
In this film, Editi Effiong uses his debut directorial project to tell the story of police brutality, corruption and injustice in Nigeria. The Black Book is a crime thriller about a bereaved deacon who will stop at nothing to get justice for the wrongful murder of his only son.
This film has a fantastic cast, with veterans such as Richard Mofe-Damijo, Sam Dede, Alex Osifo, Ireti Doyle, Patrick Doyle and Shaffy Bello among others. Normally, with a star-studded film such as this, it could get distracting, thereby affecting the overall storytelling, but in this case, the casting was absolutely superb. Every single actor gave a stellar performance, including the supporting characters. Hats off to the casting director.
But let’s get into RMD’s character, who apparently called in a marine to assist with his training, and went from single digit press-ups to 40 at a stretch and from lifting 10 kg dumbbells to 50. Now, this is what we call dedication. However, the stars of the show for us were Big Daddy and her girls. Oh, how we love women in control. We also love how absolutely no one questioned their abilities.
Also, the cinematography and production design in this film? On point! It played a crucial role in setting the film’s tone and atmosphere, especially in the flashback scenes. Everything was realistic, and after finding out they had built 38 new sets from scratch, we are certainly not surprised. The amount of thought and attention to detail that was put into this film is honestly impressive.
The costumes, lighting, shots as well as camera angles were also perfect, adding to the overall story. We don’t think an action-thriller film has ever been done like this in Nollywood.
If you’ve read all this and are still not going to see The Black Book, then “Chichi, share the groundnut!”