What is Behind the Rise of Nollywood Blockbusters?

On the surface, this data bodes well for an industry that’s gradually growing. According to the Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria, Nigerians spent over ₦6 billion (almost $4 million) at the movies in 2022. The highest-grossing Nigerian film of that year was Jade Osiberu’sBrotherhood, while Black Panther: Wakanda Forever came in as the highest-grossing film at Nigerian cinemas. Fast forward to 2023 when Funke Akindele’sA Tribe Called Judahraked in over a billion naira ($660,654) at the box office, the future of Nollywood saw a revival, but for experts and moviegoers, that may not be entirely borne of positive circumstances.

Daniel Okechukwu, a Nigerian film expert, researcher, and co-founder of In Nollywood, tells OkayAfrica that while these impressive numbers are a welcome change, as Nollywood typically only gets numbers like these during festive seasons, the steep ticket prices and declining admission numbers at the cinema tell a different story.

In a chart released by the Nigerian Box Office, the weekly average cinema attendance admissions rate was as high as 35,000 in 2020. Fast forward to just last year and that number dropped to 19,733. Still, the box office is said to have recorded ₦2.25 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2024.

Behind the numbers

Leo Osoh, a 27-year-old based in Lagos, has been a regular cinema-goer since he was in secondary school. Osoh, who works as a recruiter, remembers visiting the Ozone E-cinema in Yaba, a Lagos suburb, when it first opened around 2008. “They had a unique offering of ₦500 ($0.33) tickets for students and I took advantage of that,” he recalls. “I would sometimes go there in my school uniform after school. When I graduated secondary school, I had a gap year and in that year, I don’t think there was a single week I didn’t go to the cinema. I watched everything showing irrespective of genre.” The most important thing, as he points out is that, “Ticket prices remained the same and so financially it wasn’t a burden.”

Now for many cinema-goers like Osoh in Nigeria, regularly going to the movies is no longer a sustainable sport. “The last time I saw a movie was last month at Genesis Deluxe Cinemas, Maryland Mall and it cost me a total of ₦14,500 (about $10) — the ticket was ₦7,000 (about $5), popcorn ₦7,000, and drink ₦500,” Osoh tells OkayAfrica.

Chioma Muojekwu, a web designer, remembers paying as low as ₦700 ($0.46) for movie tickets as recently as 2020, which sometimes included drinks and popcorn. Muojekwu says the high cost of tickets, which have gone up to ₦10,000 ($6.61), has caused lines to thin at the cinema. “What used to be a packed cinema filled with glee, excitement and anticipation, has become so barren and plagued by a deafening silence of a smothered source of joy, excitement and a good time,” she reminisces. “I could take a picture in the cinema during a blockbuster weekend these days and claim that I bought out the cinema for the whole duration of the movie, and people will probably believe me. Hard not to when I'm the only person in the whole cinema.”

Nigeria’s economy has been reported to be the worst it’s ever been in years, with basic amenities such as food, now difficult for many to afford. This situation leaves many without the means to afford rising movie ticket costs and also adversely affects the profits of filmmakers. For instance, when Funke Akindele’s A Tribe Called Judah first recorded ₦1 billion, the dollar value was $1.1 million. That same figure now converts to just above $660,000 — a heartbreaking decimation of what was a landmark financial moment for Nollywood. If this feat had been achieved just a year ago, before Nigeria’s central bank governor floated the naira, the same figure would be over $2 million.

The way forward?

As Okechukwu sees it, there isn’t much cinema can do to address the real problem — low admissions. “I don’t think cinemas can do anything to mitigate the spike so it’s not their fault, they have to increase prices to balance things with inflation. It’s just them being honest with themselves about how the numbers look because they are charging more for tickets,” Okechukwu says.

The exorbitant ticket prices could seriously affect Nigeria’s cinema culture — potentially forcing people to move to streaming platforms like Netflix and YouTube which offer all the movies you can watch in a month for half the price of a regular cinema ticket. Additionally, for independent Nigerian filmmakers looking to be seen on the big screen and unable to get their films optioned for streaming platforms, this situation finds them in a difficult limbo.

“It’s a really worrying situation. If someone like me who is deep in film is not very confident about seeing a film, how do you convince [other people] to spend that much money on a ticket? It makes me feel like if it continues, we might start seeing cinemas close down, just as they did before.”

With the state of things, Nollywood might continue to record massive blockbuster numbers but these numbers will only be the reflection of a small percentage of people who have managed to secure pricey tickets, and not a testament to the growing appetite for Nollywood films at the cinema. The likelihood of moviegoers switching to YouTube and other affordable streaming platforms for Nollywood content continues to be a high possibility — that is, as Okechukwu says, if the economy continues to plummet.