How Much Is Nollywood Worth?

They say Nigeria has a US$250 million per annum movie industry, churning out some 200 videos for the home video market every month.

They say Nollywood is Africa's largest movie industry in terms of both value and the number of movies produced per year. Although Nigerian films have been produced since the 1960s, the rise of affordable digital filming and editing technologies has stimulated the country's video film industry.

If the whole Nollywood movie industry is only US$250 million which is less than the total budget of Avatar ($280 million), Tangled ($260 million), Spider-Man 3 ($258 million) or Pirates of the Caribbean sequels ($300 million) then Nollywood is still a far cry from being a global film market.

All the thousands of movies made in Nollywood since "Living in Bondage" in 1992 to date have not even made up to the $2,782,275,172, the estimated amount James Cameron's "Avatar" made at the box office!

No Nollywood movie has even made up to US$1 million and the highest grossing Nigerian film so far "Ijé, The Journey" by Chineze Anyaene did not even make up to US$500, 000.

Whereas in South Africa, Shucks Tshabalala's "Survival Guide to 2010" set a new box office record for South African films, raking in R37.5 million (US$5.2 m), while "Spud" topped R16 million (US$2.2m), "Liefling" is over R10 million (US$1.4 m), "Bakgat" topped R5 million (US$700,000) and "Jakhalsdans" earned over R2 million (US$280,000). And the South African film industry is now worth about R8 billion per annum.

Kenya has beaten Nigeria to the Oscars with "Nairobi Half Life" by David 'Tosh' Gitonga. The film was selected as the Kenyan entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards, but it did not make the final shortlist.

When will Nigeria make it?

Until Orikinla makes his first feature?

The Indian film industry Bollywood is worth over US$850 million per annum.

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