It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Nigerians genuinely curious about a young director’s Nollywood debut. But Dare Olaitan’s debut film Ojukokoro utilizing the all encompassing power of social media created a furore and had everyone trooping to the cinemas to his debut oeuvre. When the film finally debuted on March 9th, it had critically acclaimed reviews across the board, and good numbers for a debut film solidifying Olaitan’s position as a critical and commercial success. It was only a matter of time before someone stepped up to finance his next project, and now Guaranty Trust Bank owned media company, Ndani has just announced that he directed their new webseries Lagos Big Boy and put out the first wave of promotional content for the series. 

The premise for the new show is simple, albeit a little too similar to the basic premise of Ndani’s biggest success Gidi Up. It follows four twenty something millennials, trying to find success in Lagos while they juggle the usual constraints of Lagos living, posturing to fit into the right circles, circumventing nosey parents, juggling romance and career, you know everything Gidi Up already covered. Only difference is that this time, they’ve taken out all the female leads and changed them up with male ones. Lagos Big Boy seems like compensation for Skinny Girl In Transit and Rumour Has It, both with predominantly female leads.

Olaitan also serves as head writer for the show, and if the promotional material is anything to go by, he is already leaning heavily on his Guy Ritchie-esque aesthetic, labelling the characters as monolithic stereotypes and leaning heavily on them.  He is also bringing back a handful of actors from his film, fast rising entertainer and comedian, Gbolahan ‘Bollylomo’ Olatunde and Charles Etubiebi Oke. Chukwuebuka ‘ChueyChu’ Okoye, who made his name doing snap reaction videos for Pulse Nigeria is also making the jump on Lagos Big Boy and relative new comer Tosan Wiltshere rounds out the characters.

A little apprehensive about how the show will work, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

See the promo material below.

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