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Funke Akindele
Nollywood actor Stan Nze has weighed in on the ongoing debate about the use of dance and social media trends to promote films. He recently had his say during an interview on the Nollywood on Radio podcast, and fans have been reacting.
According to him, actors should be free to market their projects in ways that work for them, and it is wrong to dictate how professional movie stars should promote their work.
Stan added that Funke Akindele’s success in the Nigerian movie industry should not be reduced to viral dance videos alone.
His words, “First of all, I am going to state that you are not going to tell people how they promote their movies or push their work.
There is a controversy about dancing to promote films, and I know that a lot of that is geared towards Funke Akindele.
I worked with her from 2024 into 2025 for ‘Everybody Loves Jenifa’, and I must say she is a hard worker.
She puts in the work, and for her, it is not about dance. She puts in every tool she has to promote her work. If I know how to dance, do oratory, fashion, I will put it there.
She brings some of the greatest stylists in Africa. You see her do collaborations with some of the biggest content creators, and I think that is what people are missing. They focus on what they think is working, whereas what is actually working for her is the embodiment of everything.
Over the years, that is what I have also decided to inculcate. It is only a fool who does the same thing over and over again and expects a different result.
From the number of promotions she does, we can see the numbers she is able to get in the cinemas, and it would be foolish of me to say I am not going to do this. I believe if it is working, why not do it?”
WOW.
Nollywood is a sobriquet that originally referred to the Nigerian film industry. The origin of the term dates back to the early 2000s, traced to an article in The New York Times. Due to the history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed-upon definition for the term, which has made it a subject to several controversies.
The origin of the term “Nollywood” remains unclear; Jonathan Haynes traced the earliest usage of the word to a 2002 article by Matt Steinglass in the New York Times, where it was used to describe Nigerian cinema.
Charles Igwe noted that Norimitsu Onishi also used the name in a September 2002 article he wrote for the New York Times. The term continues to be used in the media to refer to the Nigerian film industry, with its definition later assumed to be a portmanteau of the words “Nigeria” and “Hollywood”, the American major film hub.
Film-making in Nigeria is divided largely along regional, and marginally ethnic and religious lines. Thus, there are distinct film industries – each seeking to portray the concern of the particular section and ethnicity it represents. However, there is the English-language film industry which is a melting pot for filmmaking and filmmakers from most of the regional industries.
