Observers of Nigeria’s participation at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival may have been tempted to conclude that Nollywood had finally “arrived” on the global stage. In truth, it arrived long ago. What is new — and far more consequential — is the industry’s gradual transition from an informal creative engine to an emerging economic sector.
For decades, Nollywood has been defined by its prolific output, entrepreneurial spirit, and cultural reach. Yet, despite producing thousands of films annually and commanding vast audiences across the continent and diaspora, the industry has remained largely excluded from the frameworks that enable capital efficiency, export readiness, and structural longevity.
This year, however, a notable shift took place — not in the visibility of Nigerian content, but in the articulation of its underlying commercial logic. Nigeria’s engagement at Cannes went beyond screening films. It introduced a strategic proposition: that Nollywood must be understood and supported not simply as a cultural asset, but as an economic one.
From Applause to Infrastructure
African creative industries have long been subject to what might be described as “symbolic capital fatigue”: high-profile festival showcases, streaming acquisitions, and international press coverage — with little investment in the underlying infrastructure required to convert such exposure into long-term value. This pattern has produced recognition, but not reliability.
At the Nigerian International Film Summit, held during Cannes, that paradigm was openly challenged. Kene Okwuosa, CEO of Filmhouse Group, one of West Africa’s leading entertainment conglomerates, offered a rare and unflinching assessment:
“Nollywood isn’t just content,” he stated. “It is capital. But capital without systems does not circulate.”
This distinction is vital. Despite Nollywood’s cultural significance, its economic trajectory has been constrained by the absence of reliable data, rights management systems, scalable distribution models, and formalised financing mechanisms. What Kene Okwuosa and a select group of Nigerian executives are advocating for is a fundamental repositioning — from a content industry to a creative economy.
Visibility Is Not Maturity
There remains a widespread misconception — particularly among global observers — that visibility is indicative of maturity. Yet the vast majority of Nigerian content remains commercially fragile: underprotected, underleveraged, and structurally disconnected from predictable revenue streams.
Filmhouse offers a counterpoint to that fragility. Since its inception in 2012, the company has built a vertically integrated infrastructure that combines local exhibition (now at 55 screens), exclusive distribution rights for major Hollywood studios, and the development of Nigerian intellectual property into scalable franchises. This includes titles such as Everybody Loves Jenifa and Sinners, which are achieving commercial milestones typically reserved for international blockbusters.
In the first half of 2025 alone:
- Sinners grossed just under ₦750 million at the domestic box office within six weeks.
- Everybody Loves Jenifa surpassed the ₦1 billion mark, setting a new benchmark for Nigerian cinema.
- Filmhouse is targeting $50 Million in group revenue by 2030, supported by co-productions, regional licensing and platform-neutral monetisation strategies.
These figures are not anomalies; they represent the early architecture of a repeatable business model.
A Sector at an Inflection Point
As global streaming platforms retreat from speculative international ventures and become more risk-averse, the imperative for African creative industries is clear: they must reorient from donor-driven optics to market-driven logic. The future of Nollywood lies not in external validation, but in internal coherence — in systems that allow capital to move, content to scale, and talent to retain equity in the value it creates.
What Cannes Signified — And What It Did Not
Nollywood’s formal inclusion in the Marché du Film this year was a meaningful milestone. But it should not be mistaken for structural momentum. Most African creative ecosystems remain undercapitalised, under-regulated, and operationally fragmented. Without data transparency, enforceable rights frameworks, cross-border licensing mechanisms, and regional distribution agreements, stories will remain culturally important but economically undervalued.
What executives like Okwuosa are articulating is a necessary shift in language — from validation to valuation.
The Broader Stakes
Nollywood is not merely a cultural force. It is a major employer, a driver of youth engagement, and a soft power asset. But its future will depend less on the quality of its storytelling — which has never been in question — and more on its capacity to institutionalise the fundamentals of a modern industry: ownership, licensing, monetisation, and policy alignment.
What Nigeria requires now is not greater exposure, but deliberate investment in regulatory reform, structured financing, regional co-production treaties, and the development of intra-African distribution pathways.
In that context, 2025 should not be seen as the year Nollywood “arrived.” That milestone passed years ago. Rather, this may be remembered — if the moment is sustained — as the year Nigeria began to formalise the business of storytelling.
And if that process continues, the applause may one day become incidental to the impact.
