Nollywood’s filmmaker Kunle Afolayan met an Agony Auntie recently, and got a shoulder to cry on while complaining of his N8 billion film village struggling to survive the teething stage.

Afolayan, 52, in a podcast episode ex-Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun hosted, said rising maintenance costs have choked his investment in his film village. Shuttering it is now on the cards.

His carping, though, came off as a plea for government’s support—Hollywood-fashioned.

But the rub is: Hollywood gets no stashes of greenbacks from either the federal or the state governments in the U.S. Whatever boons the movie industry there enjoys come as tax reliefs, mostly from the states. Well, Afolayan never griped about paying heavy taxes for which he might seek a cut.

Again, Georgia, New York, California, and other American states hosting film production estates and studios are giving tax reliefs not just for the feel-good aspect of the policy; the film villages and locations provide local employment. No idea of how many jobs the Nigerian film villages have created so far in their host communities.

Yet no fewer than five film villages in Lagos, Oyo, and Delta compete for major film projects in Nigeria’s broader creative economy which fell shy of $16 billion last year. Nollywood’s slice of the revenue same year—N16 billion— indicates, however, the supply has overwhelmed the demand for pricy film shooting locations. Aside from Afolayan’s N8bn cost centre, filmmaker Ibrahim Chatta’s Chatta Africa Film Village, also in Oyo, cost N1.4bn to start. And Del York Film Academy at Epe, Lagos, $100 million.

It’s not impossible, though, for Afolayan and others to get state support in Nigeria. Del York Film Academy and its Delta counterpart have taken a cue. Their state governments, as partners, have pitched in millions for development and scaling of the film villages.