Sweet succe for Akin Omotoso

Tell Me Sweet Something, local filmmaker Akin Omotoso's romantic comedy starring Nomzamo Mbatha and Maps Maponyane is fast becoming a favourite among local cinemagoers. In its opening two weeks, the film climbed into the top five at the box office and has earned R1.6 million. by Grethe Koen

Omotoso says the first step is about getting your audience excited about the movie, and getting them to understand it is something worth watching, well before it hits the screen.

How can we get audiences as excited about a movie as people get about music? There is a psychological barrier we have to break about people's perceptions of local movies. We started marketing it a year before its premiere, he says.

It took him and his team five years to shoot the film, during which people kept saying no one was going to watch it. But Omotoso persisted in building the hype.

Take Star Wars, for instance. They also started marketing it a year before. I'm not saying this film is Star Wars, but we have to start taking pride in our movies, to tell people this film is worth getting excited about, to have that confidence.

But hype means nothing if a film is bad. Luckily for Omotoso, audiences have given it rave reviews.

One fan said on social media: Just watched Tell Me Sweet Something. Yes, I was still crying in this picture ... I still want to cry some more! I still can't put my experience into words. What I can say though is that it made me miss Joburg.

So why do they like it? Omotoso says: It's a film that warms your heart. A perfect date movie. We don't talk about love enough. There's so much love in our country - for each other, for your city.

--

The four top-grossing SA movies of all time

1 Schuks Tshabalala's Survival Guide to South Africa (2010) R67.47 million

2 Mama Jack (2005) R58.21 million

3 Mr Bones 2: Back from the Past (2008) R47.63 million

4 Schuks! Your Country Needs You (2013) R30.43 million

.Although not strictly a local movie, District 9 by South African director Neill Blomkamp is the highest-grossing film shot in South Africa. It raked in about R17.2 million

www.news24.com

Feature Films

South Africa

News

LINK:	http://www.filmcontact.com/news/south-africa/feature-films/sweet-succe...
	See more stories from filmcontact

Most recent headlines