With Brotherhood reaching N100 million in its first week, and Anikulapo topping the global weekly hourly views for Non-English titles on Netflix, Kunle Afolayan and Jade Osiberu have demonstrated that good movies make good money.
Greoh studios’ Brotherhood has so far raked over N153 million at the box office grossing half of Anthill and Euphoria 360’s ‘King of Thieves’ earnings of over N318 million which became the only Nollywood title produced after Omo Ghetto- The Saga (N636.1 million) to cross the N300 million threshold.
Kunle Afolayan’s epic film Anikulapo was released on National day on both Netflix and in cinemas and has created so much buzz that the movie has recently topped hourly views for the week on the platform for the Non-English category globally with 8.7 million hours in just 2 weeks of release. The movie also has made only N12 million at the box office, which confirms the preference of seeing movies at the comfort of their homes rather than spending huge sums of money at the cinemas.
As the holiday season is rapidly approaching, and big titles are coming to theaters and on streaming services, BusinessDay examines the performance of movies released in 2022 so far and what it means for the production studios and the constantly expanding movie audience heading into the final quarter of the year.
VSL media’s Passport’ holds the spot for the third best grossing movie released in 2022 at N80.7 million while other films such as ‘The Man For the Job’, Obara’m, Blood Covenant, horror genre Ile Owo and others have experienced so far somewhat of a low ticket sales. Others like ‘The Set Up’ relied on simultaneous releases on streaming platforms to boost revenues that were middling by the pre-corona virus standards.
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For cinema chains, Brotherhood and King of Thieves is exciting, demonstrating both the enduring appeal of their business and the value of an exclusive cinema window. Major studios like Ebony Life, and KAP production have experimented with partnering and putting new titles exclusively on streaming platforms such as Netflix. Although Greoh has previously stuck with its releases completing their run in cinema and collecting profits on hits before getting further windfall from streaming deals, the recent partnership with newcomers Prime Video Nigeria’ sees the company set to debut the highly anticipated ‘Gang Of Lagos’ as the streaming platform’s first local original film.
The ‘Cinema Before Streaming’ revenue model though new to Nollywood has been practised by Hollywood pre-pandemic but due to covid, the adoption of streaming only movies began go become the norm but thanks to SpiderMan No Way Home, which was a massive post pandemic success locally and internationally, studios worldwide including in Nollywood will endeavour to return to the model .
Coming into the last quarter of the year, as the festive season is fast approaching, we might see more drama films released directly to streaming, making cinemas even more reliant on action movies such as Brotherhood, and comedy genres which tend to fill screens more during the festive season and keep the cinema in business. Movies like Death And The King’s Horseman, and Kemi Adetiba’s mini series ‘Den of Snakes’ look to continue on the path set by Blood Sisters, Glamour Girls and most recently released Anikulapo.
Hollywood releases
For obvious reasons we can’t leave out Hollywood titles as they tend to bring in most of the revenue for the cinema business. As the local studios still starve movie goers from action movies over the years due to lack of technology to produce the same quality of film, moviegoers look to Hollywood to deliver in that genre.
So far this year, Marvel Cinematic Universe have raked a huge chunk of revenue with No Way Home which had a long screening time grossing over N750 million, Doctor Strange and The Multiverse Of Madness doing over N435 million and Thor Love and Thunder raking over N376 million.
The Woman King is the only movie outside of the Marvel franchise to cross the 300 million threshold and is still showing in cinemas in Nigeria looking to reach N400 million. Other movies such as The Batman, Top Gun Maverick and Morbius which were surprisingly underperforming at the local box office could trace that to the cost of living crisis and the choice for moviegoers to wait till the movie pops up online for easy downloads to watch at home.
However upcoming Hollywood releases, such as Black Panther 2 and Avatar, are most likely to fill cinema seats during the last quarter of the year with Nollywood also with its own fair share of anticipated films like Editi Effiong’s The Black Book.
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