The picture above is a list of the top twenty films released in 2019. There are many things to take out from this chart, but I want to highlight one thing: 19 of the top 20 films made over N100m and the 20th made close enough that it made no difference.
Compare this to the picture below, which is of the list of the Top Ten Titles in 2016 and 2017 when I started talking about N100m being the standard for a blockbuster.
As you can see in 2016 and 2017 (though barely) you could make the Top 10 without making N100m. The N100m mark was the mark of a singular achievement just 3–4 years ago.
It’s a mark of the development of the Nigerian box office that the N100m that was so hard to reach just 3 years ago is now crossed by 19 to 20 films a year.
However this development does raise a question: now that 19– 20 films a year are making N100m is N100m really still the mark of a blockbuster?
The other thing to consider is the Top Ten All Time list:
In 2016/2017 only two films in the top ten all time had made over 200m and you had a number of films in the N100m+ club on the all time top ten list. However flash foward to 2019 and right now to make the top ten all time you need to have match Sugar Rush at N279m.
So it is clear that N100m is becoming less and less the target benchmark for the biggest films. Those films are clearly targeting N200m and more with the biggest films clearly targeting N300m and above.
The title of this post basically is arguing that N200m is where N100m was in 2016/17 and the numbers seem to bear that out. In 2018 we had 6 films make over N200m and in 2019 we had 7. This is sort of the relationship we had with N100m in 2016/17. It’s achievable but difficult — a milestone that matters.
Of course I’m sure that that N100m will still remain the industry standard for blockbuster because it is a nice number and it is increasingly easy to reach. Who wants to do high jump. However I just found that the analysis showed that there was a structural move to N200m and it was a pretty cool signifier of the growth of the Nigerian Box Office.
If the growth continues, I’m sure by 2023/4 we’ll be talking about N300m to N400m being the standard and then by 2027 we’d be talking around N500m which is over a million dollars (devaluation willing) — of course this assumes that theatrical avoids the secular decline occurring in the Western World. If it does, we’d have witnessed a pretty cool transformation of our box office in just a decade. And that my friends will truly be a beautiful thing.
Laters.
