Analysis in brief: Nicknamed Nollywood, Nigeria’s filmmaking sector has succeeded both financially and in establishing Africa’s first film product to win continental viewers and global audiences, potentially expanding the sphere for investment in the industry.
In 2024, a historical trend was reversed. Nollywood, the film industry of Nigeria, has outsold Hollywood films in Nigerian cinema for the first time, while extending its reach to all corners of the globe accessible by satellite feed.
Before Nollywood, African cinema production was a parochial enterprise, creating products that appealed only to a national audience but not beyond the producing nation’s borders. Some were even only watched by a segment of a national population, such as South Africa’s Afrikaans movies. North African countries have had thriving film industries, but their productions were targeted at local audiences. Even the classic films of Egypt during its brief period of political and artistic freedom in the late 1950s were considered aesthetic triumphs and won awards, but their international distribution was limited to European and American art house cinemas and film festivals. The Botswana-South African co-production of ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’ was a global hit but proved an outlier that did not provide the genesis for a Southern African film industry. No South African international hits have emerged since ‘District Nine’ in 2009. Though the Oscar-winning ‘Tsotsi’ earned less than US$12 million, it was a negligible fraction of the US$1.07 billion earned by 2006’s top-grossing movie, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest’.
Africa’s film industries have historically been unable to consistently produce the mass-appeal and technically proficient movies that Hollywood provides. Theatres were relatively few since, during the 1930s and 1940s, they were often built by Hollywood studios to screen that studio’s productions. Until the 1990s, that paradigm persisted. Then a corps of hustling young Nigerian filmmakers seized a shift in how audiences watched movies and created a revolution in Africa’s entertainment sector.
Data courtesy: 234 Intel
Stay-at-home audiences become the customers for the filmic revolution
A technological revolution in how Africans view movies. The innovation of the 1980s, the videocassette or VHS tape spawned a trend that, coupled with sound systems, created home entertainment centres. Hollywood flooded the market with VHS tapes of its films, which were sold in stores in towns large and small.
Nollywood was pioneered by filmmakers like Jab Adu, Ola Balogun, Hubert Ogunde, Moses Olaiya and Eddie Ugboma in the 1960s. Their focus on Nigerian stories, past and present, acted by Nigerian cast members, set in Nigerian locations and scored with Nigerian music resonated with audiences throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Since then, and despite Nigerian filmmakers not being able to compete with big-budget Hollywood productions, they found innovative ways to capture their local audiences. Made for a few hundred US dollars and usually grossing little in rental revenues, the productions were rudimentary and often followed characters who sat on couches, talking. However, they had a relatability that African audiences found irresistible. They focused on characters, not spectacle, with stories driven by strong narratives and not special effects. West African audiences in particular devoured them.
Piracy was the fledgling industry’s greatest threat, where VHS tapes were illegally copied and sold at low costs on the streets. Piracy became even easier when VHS tapes were surpassed by DVDs. The advent of online streaming services finally gave filmmakers a secure way to distribute their movies. Regardless, as productions grew more sophisticated, benefitting from improved and less costly cameras and filmic technologies, Nollywood feature films became fixtures in theatres, competing and recently outselling Hollywood fare.
Nigeria has only 81 theatres nationwide. Most are located in Lagos, with much of the remainder in the country’s southwest region. Nollywood’s share of Nigeria’s theatre ticket sales has steadily grown until local productions edged past Hollywood’s sales in 2024. The Nollywood film industry captured 50.05% of box office revenue during the first half of 2024, according to the Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria. From January to June 2024, box office for Nigerian films was 34% higher than that same period in 2023. The Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria anticipates a 40% year-on-year growth after 2024.
While rebounding from the Covid-19 pandemic closure of entertainment venues, the first half of 2023’s box office was 62% higher than the first half of 2022’s. This was more than a return to previous levels; 2023 saw the highest box office revenues ever in Nigerian history. In 2024, box office growth has come, despite the difficult financial conditions faced by filmmakers seeking funding for their productions and audience’s own financial challenges in the current Nigerian economy. Ticket prices have also been raised substantially to keep pace with the country’s inflation, which stood at 34% in October 2024. Such robust growth under the circumstances is seen as an invitation for more local and international investment into Nigeria’s film sector.
Image courtesy: Bestvillage from Wikimedia Commons
A growing investment destination
During its first 30 years, Nollywood’s filmmaking was characterised by independent productions and maverick directors, cobbling together casts and film crews to produce individual movies. Internationally, the streaming service Netflix purchases individual films at a low cost of US$10,000 to US$100,000, but it also finances exclusive Netflix productions made by Nigerian filmmakers. More locally, Nigeria is home to several studios, although only one produces multiple productions.
With 12 movies released in 2024, FilmOne Entertainment is Nigeria’s top movie studio. It distributes the films it produces and collaborates with other production houses. One such house is Anthill Studios, which is owned by filmmaker Niyi Akinmolayan, the director of successful films like ‘The Wedding Party 2’ and ‘The Set Up.’ Anthill Studios released three movies in 2023. While other top studios like Greoh Studios (‘Brotherhood’), Euphoria 360 (‘King of Thieves’) and Funke Ayotunde Akindele Network (‘Battle on Buka Street’) produced only one film each at a time, their releases did such outstanding business in theatres that their production houses are considered serious players in the industry.
Image courtesy: Bestvillage from Wikimedia Commons
Additional economic benefits
Hollywood is noted for its numerous soundstages, where sound and lighting conditions are controlled, and the weather is not disruptive. Nigeria has few soundstages, which compels filmmakers to shoot on location. While this causes production headaches, most notably from the weather, the authenticity this creates has become the hallmark for Nollywood films and enhances its appeal to African audiences. Such activity lifts local economies as productions spend on hotels, catering, transportation, use of local people as extras and on rentals. Lagos has benefitted significantly from the boom in filmmaking, both from local productions and international films that come to use Nigerian locations for their stories. Along with foreign filmmakers, international financiers and investors have bankrolled this growing film centre of African entertainment.
The critical points:
- For the first time, Nigerian-made movies are outselling Hollywood films at African cinema box offices in 2024
- Nigeria has relatively few theatres, so Nollywood looks to streaming services and new film delivery technologies to earn revenue
- Nollywood films are characterised by well-directed character-driven stories with strong narratives about African situations and peoples, set against authentic African backgrounds, played by talented African actors – all creating a product popular throughout Sub-Saharan Africa