Cinemas in Nigeria are seeing a fast decline in attendance as well as in revenue. Nollywood also loses money from films released in theatre before the lockdown.
Movie distributors are yet to get back to us on the topic. But the Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria (CEAN) have also revealed some details relating to cinema attendance the lask weeks.
Movies released all through January including ‘The Legend of Inikpi’ managed to get away from the blow. But it is hard to tell if the revenue of movies like ‘Joseph’, ‘Secrets’ had anything to do with the coronavirus scare.
From a total gross of N74.7 million on the CEAN mid-January sheet to N60.1 million, a %20 drop at the beginning of February.
As cases in Nigeria increased the number further shrank to N45,283,647 million currently.
Nollywood films that premiered from mid-February until the beginning of March like took a hit from the coronavirus terror. ‘Our Jesus Story’ and many others that were supposed to be running now have now been postponed.
With the initiation of a lockdown in Lagos and Abuja the hotbed for cinema-goers in Nigeria, attendance has dropped to just hundreds.
The movie theatre business in Nigeria is quite fragile and the lockdown isn’t making it easy. Sources say that many in Nollywood are now hoping to get their movies on streaming services like Netflix to circumvent money losses. The streamer is offering its services to its viewers at home using exciting methods like Netflix Party to help friends beat distance.
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IROKOTV is also an option, however, the streamer runs a production house of its own, ROK Studios. It would probably want to limit competition from movies made by its Nollywood colleagues.
Streaming services continue to run uninterrupted during the pandemic. Some are leveraging the situation to attract new customers with new offers. The case is the reverse for cinemas.
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