Nollywood is further gaining popularity due to its transformations, which bear resemblances to the processes of gentrification and professionalization. This is formalizing the industry as well as attracting professionals and instigating existing filmmakers to improve on their art. So far, filmmakers have continued to avail themselves for further trainings, aligning themselves with the emerging new and professionalizing Nollywood. This study is interested in finding out whether these changes within the industry are simply a professionalization process or a regeneration that can potentially gentrify the industry. Gentrification, an urban development term which captures the process that alters the structure of a district to suit middle- or upper-class taste, is burdened with the baggage of displacement and so attracts negativity. This study adopts gentrification as a metaphor. Thus, it captures a process where a once-not-so-aesthetic item available exclusively to the general masses becomes fanciful as a result of middle- or upper-class engagement. This study contextualizes the concepts of gentrification and professionalization to put in perspective class separation, formalization of Nollywood, emergence of the new Nollywood, and other transformations reshaping Nollywood and bringing about sectoring within the industry. This study concludes that Nollywood is currently gentrifying as well as professionalizing. Its gradual progression from its old, traditional form into a new quality and aesthetics conscious nature results from availability of resources for production and distribution, and an interaction with corporate bodies and between new film professionals and existing industry players who avail themselves for further trainings.

The history of the Nigerian cinema remains a popular discourse in scholarship. However, one phase in the history of its emergence and development remains more prominent and dominant over others—the video boom era. While some scholars discuss this with appreciation of the doggedness and determination of its players, some are condescending, even condemning as the industry is mirrored against the professionality and remarkability of renowned industries especially Hollywood. This negativity has persisted, warranting that some industry players distance themselves from the sobriquet, Nollywood, which has come to stand for the Nigerian video and film industry. This study takes up the call from industry players for scholarship to re-evaluate and redefine the contemporary Nollywood whose history as well as industrial activity has gone beyond the video boom era. Beyond discussing factors that are currently reshaping Nollywood, this study uses two select films and data collected via interviews with over 20 industry players to re-evaluate production and distribution of films in the industry.

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Political economy studies control and survival in social life. It is simply defined as the study of production and exchange and how these activities relate with the state and its laws. It is interested in how politics interacts with economics. Extensive essays and texts on the political economy of the film industry in general, and of Hollywood in particular abound. Such studies on Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry, remains scarce. But in recent times, authors, both indigenous and foreign, are beginning to give increased attention to the struggle for power and control within the industry. This study is interested in how economic activities in Nollywood interact with the law and government. It searches existent scholarship to interrogate what has been discussed on aspects of the political economy of the industry. It discusses these studies under production, distribution and consumption. It reviews other important industry matters like policies, interrogating briefly the place of MOPICON in the political economy of Nollywood. This review forms an important document for research on Nollywood, to curb and forestall consistent repetition of studies within Nollywood scholarship.

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