Showmax spotlights ChinneyLove Eze: The young producer making hit Nollywood movies

Producers like Chinneylove Eze usually lurk in the background, unknown and often underappreciated.

“Quite a number of people know Hire A Man, Hire A Woman, Devil in Agbada but don’t know who made these movies,” Chinneylove wrote on Instagram. 

Like many other Nigerian movie producers, Chinneylove Eze started her Nollywood journey as an actor before transitioning into a producer.

“I have always wanted to be a producer. I just didn’t want to get into the industry as a producer. I wanted to really get acquainted with the industry, make friends, and know basically how it works. But I really never had a passion for acting,” she said in a recent interview.

Her decision to understand how the movie industry works before diving into film production paid off with her debut movie, The Cartel, in 2013. Featuring Nollywood stars like Mike Ezuronye and many others from South Africa, Ghana, and Tanzania, the film got a lot of buzz, bagging four nominations at the Best of Nollywood Awards and five nominations at the African Film Festival and Academy Awards (ZAFAA) awards. 

With the resounding success of The Cartel, Chinneylove, who was 25 at the time, declared herself the ‘youngest most successful filmmaker.’ But the young executive producer and scriptwriter was just beginning to write her success story.

A graduate of Economics and Statistics from the University of Benin, ChinneyLove followed the success of The Cartel with Maduka Daughters in 2014, a romantic comedy, and Hire A Man, in 2016, which became the seventh highest-grossing Nollywood title of 2017 with an estimated domestic gross of ₦45 million.

In 2018, the young executive would make another hit at the cinemas with her movie, June. If there were still doubts that Chinneylove Eze was one of the biggest producers in Nollywood, her 2019 movie, Hire A Woman, cleared the doubt. Long into 2019, the movie remained the highest-grossing title in the box office.

Born on August 11, 1988, Chinneylove hails from Aguata in Anambra state and has over 20 movies to her credit. But the executive producer/director has more up her sleeves, and she’s more than deserving of a spot on the Women of Showmax list.