Cinema exhibitors seek religious communities’ support for viewership

The Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria (CEAN) has called on religious communities to give support to the cinema industry by viewing gospel movies at cinemas, with a view to increasing revenue and viewership. CEAN’s National Chairman, Mr Patrick Lee, made the call in Lagos. This money-spinning intelligence trade with bandits… How bandits killed 65 ‘Yan-Sa-Kai […]

The Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria (CEAN) has called on religious communities to give support to the cinema industry by viewing gospel movies at cinemas, with a view to increasing revenue and viewership.

CEAN’s National Chairman, Mr Patrick Lee, made the call in Lagos.

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According to Lee, religious movies when exhibited at cinemas, usually do not get the human traffic needed to boost their viewership.

He said that gospel movies did not always generate much sales at cinemas as romantic comedies.

Lee added that it was high time the religious communities began to give reasonable support and patronage to gospel movies, considering their  moral values.

He noted that supporting the cinema industry would also translate to boosting job creation and promotion of sound moral values.

He said: “We seek more support from the religious community over gospel movies. We know there are  a lot of people who support such movies, but need to come out to the cinemas when such movies are showing so that the cinemas can generate good returns on their investment.

“The reason we don’t often showcase gospel movies is that the religious community does not support their product.  They don’t come out to watch and that is a challenge for us.”

“Over the years, we have released films that have moral backgrounds perculiar to the church community and we expect it (the church community)  to support such movies. But the reality is that they do not. Religious movies don’t do well in cinemas.  Instead, people prefer to watch a Batman, Spiderman or a romantic comedy,” he added.

“The challenge is that investing in such movies across the cinemas will make us run at a loss because we don’t generate the needed traffic for those movies,” Lee said.

He added  that a comedy could generate over N200 million, but for religious movies, cinemas would only struggle to generate N30 million, which is not encouraging.

“This is surprising because we have some churches that use our halls for services.  But immediately they finish, they go home.  They don’t watch any religious movie even after service. It is a challenge for us in trying to get people to watch more of religious movies.

“We want to show them, but we have limited screens and we want to ensure that whatever we are pushing out fetches good returns in terms of sales,” he said. (NAN)