Nigerian Film Industry Hits N4.4 billion Box Office Performance

The Managing Director, FilmOne Distribution/Production, Moses Babatope, on Sunday, said the box office performance of the film industry recorded N4.4 billion as of August 31.

Mr Babatope made this revelation at the just concluded Nigerian International Film (NIF) Summit held in Lagos.

According to him, the figure is the earnings from the 53 Cinemas and 133 screens across the country owned by Six Exhibitors.

He said, ”These figures are cooled by Comscore as at August 31.

“Out of this, N741. 47 million and N652.03 million earnings were recorded in April and August respectively. This is closely followed by N577.13 million in May and N567.72 million in July.

“The earnings in January was N560.43 million and is due to two major December titles: Aquaman and Chief Daddy, which continued to lead in spite of newer January introductions.”

Mr Babatope also noted that the low earnings of N319.24 million in February and N436.18 million in March were due to the election violence and postponements which affected the box office forecast.Advertisement
He said that within the eight months period, over 79 Nollywood titles were released as compared with over 50 Hollywood titles.

According to him, the 10 top Hollywood release for the period are Avengers End Game, The Lion King, Hobbs and Shaw, Captain Marvel, Aladdin, Spiderman Far from Home, John Wick, What Men Want, Shazam and Alita.

The managing director said that the top 10 Nollywood releases were The Bling Lagosians, The Set Up, Mokali, Gold Status, Knock Out, Hire a Woman, Coming from Insanity, She is, The ReUnion, and Makate Must Sell.

Mr Babatope said that 100 per cent of territory’s Cinemas had been integrated into the Data Reporting on Comscore. He said in spite of these earnings, the Film industry was still losing revenue from Cinemas due to lack of screens to fully exploit a film’s opening weekend potentials.

Mr Babatope added that more than 2.5 per cent of the recorded earnings were lost in Cinema, 10 per cent to file sharing and illegal downloads (Transactional and Subscription Video on Demand). He included that about five per cent earnings were lost to unlicensed and unauthorised broadcast (PayTV) and approximately 10 per cent on each ancillary line in piracy and unauthorised exhibitions (DVD sales).

By Tobi Olusola (Source: NAN)