For twenty years, a Ghanaian film’s distribution path ran through a handful of local cinema chains and, eventually, DVD sellers at Kantamanto. That path barely exists anymore.
Where the leverage actually sits
A streaming pre-sale can now fund forty percent of a budget before a single frame is shot — but the contracts are negotiated abroad, in a language of minimum guarantees and territory windows that most local producers are encountering for the first time.
The deal terms are decided somewhere the filmmaker has never been in the room.
This is not, on its own, a bad development. It is a fast one — and the producers navigating it well are the ones who found entertainment lawyers before they found the deal, not after.
