The distribution map is redrawing itself
Cinema counts are up, but the growth is concentrated in three cities and one chain. What that concentration does to a mid-budget release.
Screen counts are the number the industry likes to quote, because it goes up. The more useful number is screens that will actually take a mid-budget local title in its first week, and that number is behaving differently.
Concentration is the story. When one exhibitor controls a large share of the good rooms in the cities that matter, the terms it offers are effectively the market’s terms.
What it means for a film costing under a hundred million naira
A mid-budget release now lives or dies on whether it gets a real first-week allocation from one buyer. That is a fragile position, and it is pushing producers toward either much smaller films or much larger ones.
The middle is where most good films come from. Watching it thin out is the thing to keep an eye on this year.