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Introduction
While it may be accepted wisdom that America's "Hollywood" and India's "Bollywood" are large movie producers, the twenty-first century Nigerian movie industry (Nollywood henceforth) produces about 2,000 movies a year, which arguably places it in third place on the global film circuit ([10] Gray, 2003; [9] Evuleocha, 2008) - albeit not necessarily from a marketing competence perspective ([16] Madichie and Katwalo, 2005; [17] Madichie and Ibeh, 2006). Nollywood has also been argued ([20] Okome, 1993; [13] Haynes, 1995; [14] Haynes and Okome, 1998; [17] Madichie and Ibeh, 2006) to be the second highest revenue earner in present day Nigeria with revenue of over Graphic 1 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.]9bn (US$72 m - based on July 2009 interbank rates). Nollywood movies constitute a multimillion-dollar industry. It is arguable therefore that the industry has become big business and worthy of not only management research interest but also public policy attention. Nollywood also produces a very wide variety of storylines including those that are not readily visible in movies from other parts of the world. However, Nollywood is still considered an industry in perpetual infancy ([5] Barnard and Tuomi, 2008, p. 659).
This raises some interesting questions - notably, why is an industry of Nollywood's standing still on the margins of international recognition? To what extent is Nollywood a success at the sub-regional and international level? What are the challenges facing Nollywood and how can these be effectively managed? Consequently, this paper highlights the major impediments to the international recognition of Nollywood as an industry deserving of management research recognition and public policy attention and action. The paper is unpacked in five main sections. Following this introductory section, a review of the existing literature on the subject matter is undertaken in the next section. It provides some critical insight into the subject matter in three main parts - detailing the accounts of roadblocks to marketing Nollywood internationally. In third section, the research approach is discussed, which includes the use of questionnaires, online discussion fora, and in-depth interviews with key social actors from a convenience sample of Nollywood's diasporic audiences - it is seemingly target audience. The fourth section presents initial findings in the form of emergent themes from the preceding section. These narratives are used to...