Last Flight to Abuja goes on DVD

Omotola Jolade Ekeinde and Jim Iyke, two of the stars of the action thriller, Last Flight to Abuja, will be available to hand out flight tickets to fans of the Nollywood film, as the movie is set to be released officially on May 20.

This is part of the activities scheduled by The Nollywood Factory, the producers of the movie which recently clinched the Best Film by an African Abroad in honour of victims of last year’s plane crash at Iju outskirts of Lagos one year after the tragic incident. According to a statement by the production house, everyone who has a copy of the DVD is qualified to take part in the campaign and only needs to fill a coupon inside the movie jacket, which would be mailed back to the specified address.

  In all about five tickets would be handed out to winners at an event which would be attended by the members of cast and crew of the movie reputed to have broken box office records in West Africa, following its successful outing at the cinemas last year.

The film written and directed by Obi Emelonye grossed N8.5m in seven days, according to official Nigerian cinema ratings beating major Hollywood blockbusters such as ‘Spiderman’ ‘Think like a Man’, ‘Avengers’ and ‘Madagascar’ and was second only to the highly-rated blockbuster, ‘Dark Knight Rises’ during the cinema screenings last year.

Last Flight to Abuja, also the first Nollywood film to be shot mostly on an airplane also featured the likes of Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Ali Nuhu, Jide Kosoko, Olumide Bakare, Franca Brown, Uche Odoputa, Anthony Monjaro, Uru Eke and Celine Loader amongst others.

The movie is set in Nigeria and captured a group of everyday Nigerian travelers who boarded the last Flamingo Airways flight scheduled to fly from Lagos, the commercial city to Abuja, the capital, on a fateful Friday night in 2006.

Everything seemed alright as the plane was cruising at 30,000 feet, tranquil and on schedule. But like a snap of the finger, through a mixture of human error, technical failure and sheer bad luck, the plane rapidly develops major difficulties that send it battling on the brink of disaster.

So far, the work has been getting critical international acclaim due to its technical details as well as thematic relevance having addressed one of the recurring problems of the Nigerian aviation system, which has recorded so many fatalities in the past decade.