Cinema Report: Moviegoers Spend N492.1m in January as Nollywood Movies Dominate Box Office

Movie theatre attendance in Nigerian cinemas is slowly recovering after the nightmare of 2020. This is evident in the recent stats released by the Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria (CEAN).

The report shows that moviegoers in Nigeria spent N492.15 million at cinemas in the month of January despite “Detty December” being over.

Although this is a drop from the N512.52 million spent during the festive month of December and N551.9 million spent in January last year, it’s a massive improvement from the amount spent in most months in 2020.

Also, the data provided shows that Nigerian cinemas across the country admitted 360,928‬ movie watchers in January. Although this is lower than the 442,173‬ movie watchers in January 2020, it’s one of the highest cinema attendance numbers post-lockdown.

This shows that Nigerians are now going back to cinemas after the restrictions of the lockdown.

Nollywood movies dominate Box Office in January

What’s more impressive is the fact that Nigerian movies dominated the top 10 most-watched films in cinemas during the month. This means that Nigerians watched less foreign movies in January.

This trend is similar to what happened last year and is probably associated with the fact that only very few blockbuster Hollywood movies are released between December-January.

The dominance of Nollywood is worth celebrating considering the fact that until recently, Nollywood movies have always lost out to foreign movies.

The month picked up on a high note with cinemas making N205.7 million with movies like Omo Ghetto, Wonder Woman 1984, DOD and Quam’s Money leading the charts. 

As expected, the highest-grossing week of the month came in the first full week of the year.

Omo Ghetto was the most-watched movie of the month despite debuting in December 2020. The movie alone accounted for more than 60% of the total amount spent on movies in January.

Other Nollywood movies in the top 5 also made giant strides in the month. Wonder Woman, the only Hollywood movie that made the list also saw good numbers accounting for over N35 million spent in the month.

Notably, the last 2 full weeks in the month had grosses below N100 million. The third week grossed N72.5 million while the fourth week was even lower at N61.9 million.

For the month of love, the prospect of higher numbers looks promising with notable events like Valentines Day most likely to see the month’s grossing soar.

However, the most important factor is the availability of interesting and love themed movies to ride on the festivities.