Nollywood filmmaker at war with Silverbird over movie premiere flop

Nollywood filmmaker, Okechukwu Oku is very angry at Silverbird Cinemas.

In a statement obtained by THENETNG, Okechukwu Oku narrated why the much-anticipated premiere of his new movie, The Boss is Mine, did not hold despite the fact that dignitaries from all walks of life had gathered at the venue to witness the event.

The statement read in parts:

‘You may have been expectant and a bit curious as to why I haven’t done any post about The Boss is Mine movie Uyo premiere which was scheduled for the 10th of January at Ibom Tropicana Akwa Ibom.

‘Well after an amazing premiere in Enugu I and my team set out for Uyo the next day. We arrived at the venue and confirmed all was well and subsequently set up for Red carpet. All intended guests arrived, Iyanya, Selebobo, Ime Bishop, Ini Akpabio, The Commissioner for Tourism and a host of important dignitaries all present for an explosive event.

‘At about 4pm, Silverbird Cinema power supply went off, a situation we believed a huge company like that could handle and are prepared for. To our greatest shock, this power outage last an hour, two, three and my guest got apprehensive. We approached the management of Silverbird and was told their generator got damaged. I personally decided to visit the generator house to see this for myself and was perplexed to see 4 dead generators. I was made to understand they were waiting for their engineer to come.

‘We waited till about8:30pm then my guests started leaving. Shortly after the engineers arrival the generator powered on. Silverbird management was insensitive to the damage they were causing us as they were busy running their own business, wondering how possible that was as one of their screens was working and tickets were selling.

‘I want to use this time to say that Silverbird will not go scot free after messing up my company’s pedigree, shaming my esteemed guests and causing us massive financial loss. We will not let this issue stride.

‘My sincere apologies to all who travelled from many parts of the country to attend this premiere. We will do our best to stop Nigerian business practitioners from getting away with mishaps like this.’

When contacted to hear their side of the story, the business manager of Silverbird Cinemas, Uyo, Mr Donatus, said they tried to solve the issue when it occurred and have apologized to the filmmaker.

According to him: ‘As I speak with you now, we are yet to resolve the Generator issue. It’s been the major problem; we have been battling since that day. The generator developed the fault on that day and we have tried all we could to get it fixed but it’s still the same.

‘It is very sad; we didn’t expect it would turn out like that. We have apologized to him. But he would listen to us. We got back power around 8 PM on that day but unfortunately at that time everyone had gone.’

Asked if they were paid to use the Cinema, Donatus said, ‘Yes he paid to use the hall. We have been looking for the best way to settle with him. But he hasn’t spoken with us after that day.’

Below are photos released by the filmmaker from the event of people waiting for the premiere to start: