PRODUCERS ABEL MUTUA AND PHILIP KARANJA TALK SINKING IN SH5 MILLION DEBT

Actor Abel Mutua and his partner Philip Karanja have opened up about the bad decisions they made in 2015 after they decided to quit producing Real Househelps of Kawangware and sunk in Sh5 million debt.

According to Abel they had reached a point while producing the show they wanted to used their brand name Phil-It Productions on show credits instead of their names so as to promote their company. But the production manager at Protel Studios said that was not possible and the duo decided to quit the production and venture into producing their own TV shows.

The two had no money to shoot the pilot, Abel had used all his saving to pay for his wedding that same month. So, Philip’s wife Kate actress sponsored their pilot for Sue and Johnnie and gave them Sh150,000 and they raised the remaining Sh50,000 from other avenues. They shot the pilot but when they went to pitch to local TV stations, none of them picked it.

“Months and week passed I was hitting rock bottom, it reached a point I had to beg the landlord to allow us to stay in the house though we had three months’ rent arrears. By the time it was June of 2016 we were at rock bottom. My wife was like a single mother taking care of two children, while she gave our daughter money for break, she also used to sort me out.”

July of 2016, after receiving a call from Dagoretti South MP John Kiarie who offered him a job at his advertising agency. Mutua was ready to go back to employment but they received another call from Maisha Magic. The two producers were offered a multi-million deal to produce new TV series Hullabaloo Estate and their production Sue and Johnnie each for 52 episodes.

“We were over excited, we went back home and sat down our wives and told them our lives will change and they will no longer suffer.”

But after receiving the production money, the two producers did not negotiate with the production team and ended up in Sh5 million debt, “We over paid the crew, we never calculated the cost of production until when were on the last show, we discovered we had a huge chunk of production to be done and the money had run out.

We had not paid ourselves a single dime, the standards of production were very high and not what we were used to with local TV stations which was very expensive.

By the time we were done with two productions we were at a loss of Sh5 million. We spent all the millions given by Mnet and we had to raise another Sh5 million. If we never sunk into depression that time, we will never have.

We had worked for a full year, we had not payed ourselves and we were worse than before. We called people we had never talked to since high school, one person wired Sh1 million and other people also contributed luckily we got a second contract with Mnet and we were able to pay the remaining Sh3 million.”

In the second contract they were able to shoot a full season but never made any profit.