One Film, One Company: The Structure Investors Expect
I’ve heard the same complaint from more than one investor now. They put money into a film, and somewhere along the way it became unclear whether their money was funding that film specifically, or the producer’s whole slate of projects, past and future. That confusion alone has killed deals that had nothing wrong with the actual film.
The fix is one of the least exciting pieces of production planning, and one of the most important. Set up a single purpose LLC for the project before you take a single dollar.
Ferdy adimefe
What a Single Purpose LLC Actually Is
Here’s the part that surprises people. A single purpose entity, or SPE, “is not a type of entity, it is a purpose. Most Film SPEs are LLCs, but what makes them an SPE is that they exist for one project only”. It’s not a different legal category from any other LLC. It’s a regular company that you deliberately choose to use for exactly one film, and nothing else, ever.
That single LLC becomes the container for everything tied to the project, the copyright, the production contracts, investor funds, insurance policies, and distribution agreements. When the film is done and sold, the money flows through that one entity, not through whatever company the producer happens to run day to day.
Why Investors and Distributors Actually Care About This
There’s a specific complaint that keeps showing up in Nigerian film financing discussions, and it’s exactly what a single purpose structure is built to prevent. According to legal commentary on Nollywood’s financing setbacks, one of the most common investor grievances is discovering that funds “were diverted to other uses” instead of going toward the specific film they backed. When a producer runs multiple projects through one shared company account, it becomes genuinely difficult, sometimes for the producer too, to prove that didn’t happen.
The recommended fix is direct. Producers should establish “a special purpose vehicle basically for the production and exploitation of the film,” structured so that “its only asset will be the film and the sum derived from the exploitation of the film”. When that’s the entire structure, an investor can look at the entity and see exactly where their money went and what it’s earning, with nothing else mixed in.
Distributors care for a related but separate reason. Rights review works off “contracts, assignments, and corporate documents, not on-screen credits”. A distributor doing due diligence on a film wants to see a clean corporate history for exactly that title. A production company that’s made a dozen films, with contracts and liabilities from all of them tangled into one entity, makes that review slower and riskier than it needs to be. Isolating each project also means one film’s legal troubles, an unpaid vendor, a rights dispute, don’t put the others at risk.
What This Actually Costs to Set Up in Nigeria
The good news is this isn’t an expensive structure to create. Registering a private limited company through Nigeria’s Corporate Affairs Commission runs roughly ₦33,000 to ₦50,000 if you file it yourself, ₦60,000 to ₦100,000 through an accredited agent, or ₦100,000 to ₦250,000 or more if a law firm handles it for you, based on the current CAC fee schedule. Share capital above ₦1,000,000 adds incremental filing fees on top of that base cost. For a production budget of any real size, that’s a small line item to add clean, defensible ownership to your entire financing story.
Nigeria’s Government Just Made the Same Bet, at a Much Bigger Scale
It’s worth noting that this isn’t just advice for individual producers. In February 2025, Nigeria’s Federal Executive Council approved the Creative and Tourism Infrastructure Corporation, a special purpose vehicle created specifically to fund creative sector infrastructure, with the Ministry of Finance Incorporated holding a 25% to 49% government stake and the rest structured as a public-private partnership. Its stated purpose is to help the creative industry generate $100 billion for the Nigerian economy and create 2 million jobs, tied to projects like new cinema screens and a planned Abuja Creative City.
I want to be precise about what this example does and doesn’t prove. CTIC is an infrastructure fund, not a per-film production entity, so it’s not the same instrument this article is recommending for your next project. What it does show is that the underlying logic, isolate the asset, isolate the money, keep the structure legible to outside investors, is the same logic the federal government reached for when it needed private capital to trust a much larger bet.
Set It Up Before You Need It
The mistake I see most often isn’t skipping this step entirely. It’s doing it late, after money has already moved, after a distributor has already asked for the corporate documents, after an investor has already asked an uncomfortable question about where their funds actually went. A single purpose LLC is cheap and fast to set up. It’s much harder to retrofit onto a project that’s already commingled its finances with three other productions.
So before your next raise, ask yourself plainly. If an investor asked to see the entity that holds this film and only this film, could you show them one today?
FAQ Section:
What is a single purpose LLC in film production? It’s a regular LLC deliberately used for one film project only, holding that film’s copyright, contracts, investor funds, insurance, and distribution agreements exclusively. It’s defined by its single-project purpose, not by any special legal category.
Why do investors prefer a single purpose entity over a producer’s general company? Because it prevents a specific, common complaint in film financing, investor funds being diverted to other projects. When the entity’s only asset is the film and its earnings, investors can verify exactly where their money went.
How much does it cost to set up a single purpose LLC in Nigeria? Registering a private limited company through the Corporate Affairs Commission costs roughly ₦33,000 to ₦50,000 filed independently, ₦60,000 to ₦100,000 through an accredited agent, or ₦100,000 to ₦250,000 or more through a law firm, per the current CAC fee schedule.
Is Nigeria’s Creative and Tourism Infrastructure Corporation the same kind of SPV recommended for a single film? No. CTIC, approved in February 2025, is a national infrastructure investment vehicle targeting $100 billion in creative sector output, structured as a public-private partnership. It applies the same isolate-the-asset logic at a much larger, sector-wide scale, not a per-film structure.