Cinema Roundup: Nigerian Moviegoers Boycott Cinemas, Spend Only N367 Million on Films in September

Cinema statistics for the month of September shows a significant drop in month-on-month gross earnings for Nigerian cinema operators. According to the box office stats released by the Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria (CEAN) for the month in review, Nigerian moviegoers spent a total of N367.8 million in theatres all over the country.

This is a steep drop from the N657 million recorded in August – the highest grossing month so far in 2019. It also indicates that cinema revenue dropped by a whooping 45% in September when compared to the previous month of August.

The drop wasn’t unexpected. The holidays proved a blessing for cinemas as they experienced a surge in revenue and attendance. And as we predicted, the end of this summer holidays and resumption of activities, including schoolwork, were likely to cause a drop in revenue.

The month picked up on a high note with cinemas making N101 million with movies like ‘Angel Has Fallen’, ‘Fast and Furious: Hobbs and Shaw’, ‘The Millions’ and ‘The Lion King’ leading the charts. These four movies made most of the earnings  for the month, at over N75 million.

But that was the highest grossing week in September. Despite the release of new movies like ‘Hustlers’ and ‘Rambo: Last Blood’, the other weeks grossed within the region of N73 to N78 million.

However, there was but one bright spot. Throughout the month, there was always at least 1 Nollywood movie in the top 4 of highest grossing movies. And, in fact, during the last weekend of the month, a newly-released Nollywood movie titled ‘Love is War’ soared to 2nd spot raking in over N7 million in revenue.

This is huge considering the fact that the Nollywood movies have always lost out to foreign movies. This also goes on to reiterate that while Nollywood movies might not have displaced their Hollywood counterparts in attracting viewers, they are definitely no longer knock offs.