Doctor Bello Hits Nigerian Cinemas

 It has now been confirmed that the long awaited Tony Abulu’s Hollywood/Nollywood film, Doctor Bello, will premiere on Sunday, 25 November.

The premiere, already scheduled to hold at the Genesis Deluxe Cinema, The Palms Shopping Mall, Lekki, Lagos, will parade both Hollywood and Nollywood stars that featured in the flick. It will open with a special yellow carpet reception at 4pm with the strong backing of MTN Nigeria, and support from M-Net, AfricaMagic, StanbicIBTC Bank and Sovereign Trust Insurance.
Aside top celebrities and stakeholders in the showbiz industry billed for the evening, delectable
Nollywood queens, Genevieve Nnaji and Stephanie Okereke-Linus, who featured in the movie, are expected to grace the yellow carpet in style, alongside other cast. For now, it has not been confirmed if their Hollywood counterparts in the movie such as Isaiah Washington, Vivica A. Fox, Jimmy Jean Louis, Victor Browne, Ebby Bassey, Bern Cohen and others will be at the Lagos event.
The Nigeria screening is a follow up to the star-studded première at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, Washington DC, United States, where movie freaks got the opportunity to be among the first set of people to see the movie.
“This is Nollywood, which is basically Nigerian filmmaking combined with Hollywood. It’s important for us to reach across the pond to combine our two talents because I have a feeling that Hollywood doesn’t allow African-American actors and actresses the roles that we should be playing. I play Isaiah Washington’s wife, and we lost our daughter to cancer in the film, which then sends him out on a crusade to cure cancer. I’ve known Isaiah for over 25 years and we had never gotten an opportunity to work together,” star actress Vivica Fox said at the Washington DC premiere.
In a chat with the co-producer of the movie, Tunde MacAlabi, he informed that NEXIM Bank provided part funding for Doctor Bello, while the production team sourced the remaining fund.
“There has been conflicting reports in the media over the exact amount provided by NEXIM. Let me make it clear that NEXIM gave us $250,000 for the production; we sourced the remaining part of the fund privately. Today, we are glad to bring the movie home. This is the first Nigerian movie to be premiered in multiple countries,” MacAlabi noted.
Meanwhile, Doctor Bello will open screening at the African International Diaspora Film Festival in New York, on 23 November, before heading for London, at the Greenwich Odeon on 30 November. It will be the turn of Johannesburg to see the movie on 6 December, at the Fringe, Jo’burg Theatre, while plans are afoot to take the movie to other parts of the globe.