PIRATED 'HALF OF A YELLOW SUN' FLOODS MARKET

Less than three weeks after ‘Half of A Yellow Sun’, a film adaptation of the award-winning novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, hit the cinemas in Nigeria, pirated copies of the film are now in the streets. Checks around town days back we saw scores of street vendors were seen hawking copies of the novel alongside DVDs containing the film, which sold for N500 each, in different parts of the Lagos metropolis.

 

A leading movie marketer and distributor in Lagos said that the copies of Half of A Yellow Sun film that are currently sold on the streets were pirated. 'To the best of my knowledge, Half of A Yellow Sun has not been officially released on DVD in Nigeria. I think the pirates managed to get hold of the film when it was released abroad.” The source said he was not sure that the original copy pirated by the criminals was brought into the country from outside. He said, “I believe that the copy that was pirated must have been sourced abroad. The copy that we saw was raw. There were scenes of violence, which I’m sure, would have been removed by the Censors Board by now, in that copy of the film.”

 

Our source fingered the infamous pirates operating at the Alaba International Market in Lagos as the suspects behind the ‘unofficial’ sale of the film in the city. “Even as I am talking to you, Half of A Yellow Sun is selling like hot cake in Alaba. The pirated copies are everywhere in Alaba right now' .

Half of a Yellow Sun, which opened on August 1, 2014 was top of the charts in every cinema in Nigeria. Ticket sales of the film accounted for over 50 per cent of total box office takings.

“Half of a Yellow Sun beat Marvel/Disney’s ‘Guardian of the Galaxy’, starring Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper and Zoe Saldana to achieve this feat. Exit polling shows audiences are happy with the film and word of mouth should gradually spread.” Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Anika Noni Rose, Joseph Mawle, Onyeka Onwenu and John Boyega, among others, Half of A Yellow Sun was first premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival in Canada and released in the United States before it opened in Nigerian cinemas earlier this month.

Before now, the delay in the official approval of the film was the subject of a long-drawn controversy between the producers of the film, the author and Film Censors Board.