The Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria (CEAN) has urged religious communities to give support to the cinema industry by viewing gospel movies at cinemas, thereby increasing revenue and viewership.
CEAN’s National Chairman, Mr Patrick Lee, made the plea in Lagos.
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 often recorded for romantic comedies.
Lee said it was high time the religious communities began to give reasonable support and patronage to gospel movies, considering the morals embedded in them.
He noted that supporting the cinema industry would also translate to helping to boost 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 lots of people who support such movies but need to come out to the cinamas 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 because the religious community do 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 background, specific to the church community and we expect 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.
“The challenge is that investing in such movies across the cinemas will make us run at loss because we don’t generate the needed traffic for those movies.”
Lee said that a comedy could generate over N200million but for religious movies, cinemas would only struggle to generate N30million, which is not encouraging.