Even though reports have revealed that most Nigerians battle one form of economic hardship or the other, the new data has shown that the sum of N6.94bn was spent on movies in 2022.
This development is coming at a time when the majority believe that Nigerian citizens might have been losing the appetite for visiting cinemas to see movies.
The majority of the populace is fast embracing Multichoice decoders for DSTV and GoTV, thus dwindling the rate at which people patronise Cinema.
But, the data showed that Nigerians expended a record-breaking N6.94bn on movies last year, which is over N2.2bn higher than the N4.7bn realised in 2021.
The amount, nonetheless, represented a 31.7% YoY increase in revenue from 2021, the growth was less than the 55.7% increase recorded in 2021, when compared to the figure of N2.1 billion in gross earnings from 2020.
What was generated in 2020 has been, however, linked to the lockdown occasioned by the global COVID-19 pandemic. During this period whereby Nigerians, with the exemption of those on essential duties, many Nigerians stayed indoors and embraced other means of passing time and catching fun.
With the latest data, Nigerians seemed to have renewed their penchant for visiting cinema judging by the huge amount of money recorded last year.
Similarly, the most-grossed Nollywood movie in 2022 was ‘Brotherhood’ directed by Jade Osiberu. The movie fetched over N328 million in revenue and is closely followed by ‘King of Thieves’, which generated N321 million.
Also, Hollywood’s Black Panther 2 – Wakanda Forever’ was the highest-grossing Hollywood movie with N926M in revenue, followed by the Woman King with N472M in gross revenue. According to the data, Wakanda Forever is on track to becoming the first N1 billion movie.
The Box Office statistics revealed that, with admissions being unchanged from the previous year, the biggest contributor to the increase in revenues was the rise in average ticket prices. Accordingly, Nigerians paid more in 2022 than they did the year before.
Though, the data noted that cinema admissions in 2021 were a bit lower than those in 2022 as cinemas recorded 3,188,732 annual admissions in 2022 compared to 3,239,336 annual admissions in 2021.
Following these achievements in the movie industry, Africa recorded a significant stride as their counterpart, Hollywood, directed their focus on producing African content and engagement. Movies like Black Panther 2 and The Woman King, were a demonstration of that effort.
Even though Nigerians are facing economic dire straits as prices of food items and other utilities including cinema tickets, skyrocket on daily basis,
Investors King observes that the urge for unwinding after a day’s work, especially on weekends, has not rescinded.