Interview: Nigerian Box Office Talks Origins, Filling the Info Gap, and Lessons for Nollywood Fans and Filmmakers

In the last decade, across film, TV, music and other media, there has been a notable shift in how consumers engage with tart. Access to previously distant data and unmasking of the celebrity mythos a la social media, among other factors, have made it such that fans are more invested in the product, producers, and the business. A random Hollywood enthusiast living on the other side of the planet can easily tell you what actors and directors make the most money. Disagreements about international Box Office earnings can be resolved with a few key strokes. This is the case in most countries. 

In Nigeria, this data isn’t as readily available. And it was this gap that prompted the creation of the brand, Nigerian Box Office, back in 2021. Operating anonymously, but with verifiable data, the brand, which is notably active on X (FKA Twitter), with over 6,000 followers, and Instagram, with over 270 followers, has become referential for Nollywood. In five years, they have established themselves as a foremost authority on the industry’s numbers, giving insight and analytics to fans and stakeholders alike. 

In this interview with Black Film Wire, Nigerian Box Office’s anonymous handler tells us about its origins, methodology, challenges, and relevance in the changing media landscape; why Brotherhood’s Box Office numbers require more attention and the lessons to take from Funke Akindele’s billion Naira grossings. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

How did the Nigerian Box Office come about? 

I’d long been a film enthusiast. But I was also interested in the business of film: the box office, the budgets, what really happens behind the scenes in terms of the numbers, contracts, and how everything just comes together. My interest spiked for Hollywood movies. As far back as 2015, we’d go to the cinemas to watch a Hollywood movie, and could see the business side. But that was the opposite for Nigerian movies, where very few had the data. 

2016 was when my interest in Nollywood movies really took off. The Wedding Party made me see Nollywood from a different perspective and made me interested in our local box office numbers. The numbers weren’t published. There wasn’t a verifiable platform, as we have now. They were posting from the Wikipedia page, and I kept seeing the grossings go up. The interest continued, but the challenge was the lack of verifiable data at the time. 

In February 2018, we formed an organisation called the Cinemas Exhibitors’ Association of Nigeria (CEAN). They had a partnership with Comscore and a mandate to start reporting the box office numbers publicly, with a verified, globally recognised platform [like Comscore]. By December 2018, they started publishing the data. They were publishing twice a week, for the opening weekend and the full week. 

When we say opening weekend, we refer to Friday, Saturday and Sunday; and when we say the full week, we refer to Friday to Thursday.  So, they published twice: on Monday for the weekend of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and on Friday for the full week of Friday to Thursday. What also made my interest go up was that prior to Comscore, some numbers were just pure estimates. For instance, a movie like The Wedding Party would just write 450 million, but I know that a movie can’t just gross a perfect number like that. There’s always a certain amount

So, I started investigating, I dug deeper and got in touch with the people behind these numbers to understand how it works. I could also see that for the US Box Office, there were platforms such as Box Office Mojo and The Numbers that did a good job breaking down the numbers, and I wanted that for Nigeria. So I took it upon myself and started keeping track of this data.  I wanted to be able to make sense of it outside of the ones published on a weekly basis. I contacted most of the distributors to request some of their numbers. In essence, I was able to get sufficient data to build up my portfolio and keep up with Comscore. Around March 2024, they stopped publishing, which was more than 5 years after. Once I contacted them, the feedback I was given was that Nigeria’s distributors and exhibitors now have access to the platform, or they have always had, and Comscore would no longer publish directly. They would hand over that charge to the Cinema Exhibitors’ Association of Nigeria to publish. So, the rate of publishing drastically reduced. From doing it twice a week, it went to once every two weeks. There was a huge gap. 

Eventually, I got contacted by one of the distributing companies — whom I now consult for — and I was also able to get access to Comscore, giving me first-hand access to the numbers presented. I can dissect it on a different level. I also have access to the old numbers that were not on Comscore. I try to get the latest information or the latest figures that I have for old blockbusters that we have, but I think to a very large extent, I confidently have an understanding and a good knowledge of the box office over the past seven to eight years now. 

The [X] account was opened in 2021. I didn’t want to use my personal account to talk about movies all the time, so I started connecting with film enthusiasts on Twitter (now known as X), and we kept on going. Of course, December-January is always a peak period for the account, where everybody is heavily interested. That has been the journey for the Nigerian Box Office.

To clarify, CEAN was still active until 2024, thereabouts and even last year, but the data is not always up-to-date. As it stands currently, how does most of your data come in?

As I explained, I now have access to Comscore, and that’s where I get my data from. It’s the same platform that CEAN uses. They [CEAN] still publish; however, they only publish on their Instagram account, and it isn’t as frequent as it used to be. While before they would publish on their website and also publish on their Instagram, they have now limited it to just Instagram. Then, we were in talks with a tech company that wanted to see how they could connect an API directly to Comscore’s platform so that it could update automatically. But the company itself has had challenges getting access to Comscore, which has stalled the website development. 

CEAN’s response to unfair practices claim in December. Source: CEAN Instagram

Right now, CEAN’s Secretary or President is in charge of that, and they’ve been trying to publish once every two weeks, which isn’t adequate for a regular film enthusiast. A lot of people tend to rely on our account or the distributors’ account to get information about the box office. 

What is one moment of tracking you can’t forget, either based on the reactions of people or the amount of work that went in?

Since I started reporting the Box Office, one of my most memorable occasions has been with the movie Brotherhood, released on September 23rd, 2022, I think. It’s not as though it was the most impressive or the biggest of box offices, but the staying power all through its time in cinemas was huge. The staying power and the multiplier it did for a September movie is second to none. 

So, typically, in the box office, there is something called a ‘multiplier’. A ‘Multiplier’ refers to how well your film opens over the opening weekend, divided by what it does in total gross. Typically, you have movies diminishing, meaning that their opening weekend is the strongest and it keeps diminishing til their final lifespan. You look at a multiplier to see the audience’s interests in a movie. How well was the word of mouth? Was it good or bad? And in terms of my coverage, Brotherhood was spectacular! It did a multiplier of over ten; 10.48 or 10.5, which is very impressive. For instance, if you open to 31.3 million Naira, then that means it did ten times the opening weekend figure, about 328 million Naira. And I know you can just look back on it and say, “Oh, but that’s what Funke Akindele would do in one weekend or would do in one week”. However, it meant a lot for the time, and the dynamics were different. 

Official poster for Brotherhood. Source: Greoh Studios

Why most producers want December is because the week before Christmas till the week after New Year is a holiday period for most people, and consumer spending is at its peak. So, you would have the box office overperforming in December.  I’ll give you an instance; from Dec. 20th - 26th, the box office did about 922 million Naira. That was more than September, October, and November, respectively. The week of the 27th [of December] to the 1st of January, 2026, produced more than 1.4billion Naira at the box office. That was more than any other month in 2025 apart from January and December. All through the year, whether it was with Ginger, Superman, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Iyalode, Sinners — basically all those months that felt so good — that week alone outperformed all of them. 

It just shows you how much the box office has significantly reduced compared to 2019 or 2018, except with December, where you would always see similar figures. If you check, say, December 2019, you would probably see about 240k – 245k in admissions. If you check the same week from last year’s December, you would still find a similar figure. But if you check July or February, you will find something like 35,000 or 45,000, which is low compared to 2018 or 2019. I referenced those years because they were the peak of cinema-going before COVID happened and before streaming came into full play and changed people’s habits. What I’m trying to say is that Brotherhood played as though it were a December movie, despite coming out during a non-holiday period. It excites me and is still something I will probably write about or publish on one of these days. 

There have been major concerns about admission numbers compared to the box office revenue numbers. Aside from inflation, what are the not-so-obvious factors being ignored when it comes to these low admission numbers? 

One of the underlying issues is the economy. Entertainment as a whole works with disposable income, so people will have to feed or clothe themselves first.  I think streaming also took away a lot of box office numbers.  The streaming habit has just really changed a lot of viewing patterns. What that means is that they wouldn’t go to the cinemas unless you have the biggest of movies; it has to be the biggest of blockbusters, something with so much FOMO before people would go, else they’ll be like “I can just wait for it to come to Netflix, or Prime, What’s the rush?” 

Also, there’s the fact that some films’ cinema windows are so short that they are exclusive in theatres for as low as 17 days. Some of them will only do 28 days before it goes to a TV–holding or VOD platform, and once it goes to those platforms, it gets pirated and you see copies of it online. Pre-COVID, you had Hollywood doing 45 - 90 days of exclusivity windows for their movies in the theatres. That means for about 6-14 weeks, you would not be able to watch that movie on any other platform apart from the cinemas. Right now, the windows have shortened. You still have some studios like Disney, keeping their movies longer in the cinemas, but other studios like Universal and Warner Bros. are a bit more swayed. And with platforms like Netflix bidding for Warner Bros, the future of exhibition is unclear. These are some of the factors that have really affected the cinema culture. 

Moving forward, what are the things you have in mind for the brand? What are the expansions and projects you intend to take on that followers should look out for?

I’ve started being more intentional with the Nigeria Box Office account. I have gotten a lot busier these days, and I’m unable to post as I would have wanted. One feedback I got from particular distribution companies and studios was that I was reporting very early, thereby not giving producers and distributors time to breaknews, so I’ve had to slow down how quickly I report or post things at times.

Going forward this year, I will try to post more analysis of what is going on at the box office, and include more [analysis] about admissions.  I have even tried to verify the account so that I’m able to post more in terms of characters, because it was a missing factor. I didn’t just want to have so many tweets and threads lined up.

I have also started collaborating more. There is a sort of direct partnership with Nollywire on Instagram. I have tried to expand my footprints, reaching out to media platforms; certain media use my data without necessarily reaching a partnerships and I really don’t mind, as far as you are quoting or giving credits to me. Basically, people should expect to see more collaborations. 

However, I’m a lot busier than I was before, so there may be downtimes. There may be periods when I may go silent, but I’m also looking at how I can get other team members who can take on some of these responsibilities. 

How do you deal with fandoms on Twitter and elsewhere?

I basically ignore, to be honest. I don’t try to explain too much. I won’t call them a mob, but sometimes they can act like a mob, so I will just say I ignore them. If I see you genuinely want to ask a question, then I may answer. 

One thing people do not pay enough attention to concerning box office numbers.

There are a lot of things. People love to use Funke Akindele’s success to gauge the rest of the industry. But those numbers are a result of consistency, hard work, building a fanbase and an audience. People should do their research; contact a knowledgeable distribution company to give them relevant information before going out to do a project and expecting to do billions of Naira.