If all it took to make it in the movies was a prodigious work rate and plenty of self-belief, then Lancelot Imasuen would be as well known today as Steven Spielberg.

The 47-year-old director has made well over 200 films in just 20 years, and reckons his latest romance – Love Birds - has the greatest on-screen chemistry since Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio got it together in Titanic.

Yet whether or not it lives to his hype, the chances are that Love Birds - which is due out next week – won’t be coming to a cinema near you.

Its creator is currently a household name only in his native Nigeria, where he’s among thousands of players in the ultra-low budget local film industry known as Nollywood.

Sometimes churning out movies in just weeks or even days, Nollywood is infamous for poor production values, with actors who learn their lines on the day, and plots that make Mexican soap operas look like cinema vérité.

That has not stopped it becoming hugely popular all over Africa – and nor has it stopped Imasuen aiming even beyond that.

“It's everyone's ambition to go to Hollywood and tell an African story," he told The Telegraph on the set of his new project Dawn of a New Day, where he perches in a director's chair with "D'Guvnor" written on the back. "But we're limited by finance and circumstance - hopefully those days will come."