Nigerian Box Office Stats For The First Half of the Year

The film industry has been blessed with a cocktail of both good and bad offerings so far this year. With six months down and six to go, the first half of the year has seen many movies from the three giant industries; Bollywood, Hollywood, and Nollywood, battle for a place in both the hearts of film lovers as well as placement in cinemas nationwide.

As we gear up to enjoy the remaining movies scheduled for release this year, let’s take a look at the top 40 highest grossing movies in Nigerian cinemas as seen on Box Office Mojo.

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It’s no surprise that superhero movies grossed the most and that both Avengers: Endgame and Captain Marvel, are the two highest grossing movies on this list (N490 million and N239 million respectively), since they are also among the highest worldwide also. The comedy movie, What Men Want, which is the male version of Mel Gibson’s classic flick What Women Want, came third, grossing N131 million.

box office statistics nigeria — Source: Box Office Mojo

Although DC’s Shazam! didn’t do well globally, it grossed N113 million to make the number four position. Other Hollywood movies, Little, Hell Boy, Escape Room, and John Wick 3 occupied positions below Shazam!, each grossing a little lower than the movie before it.

The highest-grossing Nollywood movie so far this year is Knockout, which stars popular comedy actor, Saka. The movie grossed N27 million, which in turn made it the ninth highest in total on the list. Away Bus is the second-highest grossing Nollywood movie for the first half of the year and it’s earnings of N13 million, is less than half of what Knockout made.

Right below Away Bus (which was 15th on the list) is the Chigul comedy movie, Makate Must Sell, which earned a total of N11 million from tickets sold at cinemas nationwide.

Other Nollywood movies on the list are 4th Republic, Cold Feet, Heaven’s Hell, Night Bus to Lagos, Gold Statue and more, with earnings even lower than Makate Must Sell.

See the pictures above for the full list.

What worries me about this is the fact that many of the Nigerian movies on this list are not more being screened in cinemas, so this begs the question as to why the grosses are this low? Could it be because of the quality of the movies, lack of promotion, or Nigerians having that bias against watching Nollywood movies in cinemas?

What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.