Agbara Nla: The Return Walks Into Cinemas and Even the Cinema Popcorn Is Praying

You know Nollywood is serious when a movie from the 1990s comes back after 33 years, and instead of asking “who is this one?”, the whole of Lagos is asking “which cinema has seats?”

So here is the gist. Agbara Nla: The Return, the faith-based sequel to the old Mount Zion classic, opened in cinemas on Friday, 2 October. According to Nairametrics, the preview screenings alone brought in about ₦71.4 million. Then the opening weekend added ₦99.15 million. All told, the film pulled ₦170.59 million from 28,468 admissions, per FilmX data. The distributor, Nile Group, says it is the biggest non-December Nollywood opening ever, the biggest October opening, and the biggest ever for a faith-based film.

Yes, you heard me. A film about spiritual power just out-opened every Nollywood film in a non-December month. Even the box office got born again.

Now please observe the weekend numbers, because they are a sermon on their own. Friday: 2,601 admissions. Saturday: 4,944. Sunday: 8,678. Look at that Sunday jump! Of course the biggest day was Sunday. In this country, nobody has to ask why. People went to church and then went to see the film about church, a perfect double bill.

And the comparisons are lovely. The opening is behind Everybody Loves Jenifa and Behind The Scenes, and ahead of A Tribe Called Judah. That ranking is from the distributor’s numbers, so take it with a bit of salt, but not so much salt that the zobo gets spoiled.

Now let me be fair, since we are friends. The articles tell us a lot about money and almost nothing about the film itself. I could not find the plot, the cast, or the director in what I read. The only “audience reaction” came from the distributor, who says the cinemas were packed and people loved it. Of course the distributor says so. When has any distributor said, “Our film is mid, please come only if you have free tickets”?

Which is the whole point. A big opening does not tell you if the film is good. It tells you that people showed up. In Nigeria, showing up is already a miracle, because we have to deal with traffic, fuel, ticket prices, and that one cousin who says, “I will watch it on YouTube later.”

The deeper joke is this: other films were in cinemas at the same time, like Black Market, Star Lomo and even Spider-Man: Brand New Day. This film is competing with Spider-Man, and it has the one superpower he cannot beat: a church WhatsApp group.