Stuff’s Toby Shapshak chats with Africa’s Netflix director Ben Amadasun
“Since 2016, we’ve invested more than R2 billion into the economy,” Ben Amadasun, director of content for Netflix for Africa, tells the Financial Mail. Netflix pledged R900m at President Cyril Ramaphosa’s fourth annual SA investment conference last month. This “substantial contribution to the SA creative industry” will fund the filming here of four productions — one international and three local. These will be done through production partners Film Afrika, Gambit Films, Quizzical Pictures and Burnt Onion.
Netflix has more than 80 SA films and TV series, as at December 2020, which were viewed 26 more times outside the country than in it last year.
Netflix’s biggest production in Africa to date — Project Panda — is being filmed at the Cape Town Film Studios. Ramaphosa and trade minister Ebrahim Patel visited it last month.
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