Happy Blood Sisters Week. This edition opens with a development that the Nigerian film industry has been waiting on for the better part of two years: Netflix is once again pushing Nigerian content to a global audience. Blood Sisters Season 2 — a limited series, notably — has premiered a second season and got an almost worldwide platform rollout simultaneously. It is a genuinely unusual combination, and it carries real significance.
The backstory matters here. For much of 2024 and early 2025, Netflix had been quietly retreating from its ambitions in the Nigerian market. Original commissions were scaled back. Licensing investments thinned. And where acquisitions were still being made, they were largely geo-locked to the African continent, meaning Nigerian titles were not surfacing to the platform’s global subscriber base. The practical effect was that Nollywood content was being treated as regional catalogue product rather than globally marketable IP.
According to industry intelligence, Blood Sisters 2 is one of three Nigerian titles Netflix has cleared for global distribution in this cycle. The others are Shantytown Season 2 and the Glamour Girls series. Whether this marks a genuine strategic recalibration or a carefully limited experiment tied to specific IP metrics is a question the market will answer over the next six to twelve months. For now, it is the most encouraging signal Nigerian producers have received from the platform in a long time, and the industry is watching closely.
5 Major Headlines To Know
1. Akinola Davies Jr. is in Lagos — My Father’s Shadow Returns to Nigerian Cinemas
British-Nigerian filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr. is currently in Lagos, meeting with Nollywood talent and filmmakers. His debut feature My Father’s Shadow, which won the BAFTA for Outstanding British Film of the Year, is returning to Nigerian cinemas. The film draws on Davies’ own childhood and the atmosphere of June 12, 1993, and was shot entirely in Lagos.
For Shock Africa, I sat down with Davies for a one-on-one during his Lagos visit. The conversation covered the identity of the film, what it is and what it is not, the awards run and what that process looked like from the inside, and how he thinks about building his body of work as a director. That interview is the newest episode of Director’s Eye, Shock Africa’s monthly video interview series. It drops this Wednesday at 4:00 PM. Watch it on the Shock Africa YouTube channel.
2. On Different Grounds and Iwe Ala: An Ojude Oba Story — Two Films, Two Private Screenings, One Release Date
Two Big Films From Established Names in Nollywood are set to both open on June 12, Democracy Day.
On Different Grounds, directed by Mildred Okwo and produced by Nicolette Ndigwe-Kalu under HB&Q Impressions, is a Nollywood-Bollywood co-production shot across Lagos and Mumbai. It follows a divorced Lagos couple forced to reunite for their daughter’s wedding. Cast includes Jennifer Eliogu, Bob-Manuel Udokwu, Uche Jombo, Nkem Owoh, Uche Montana, Ebele Okaro, BamBam Adenibuyan, and Bollywood stars Vineet Raina and Nimesh Diliprai. Distributed by Cinemax. Its private screening was held at the Civic Centre, Victoria Island, in the presence of the Olu of Warri, His Majesty Ogiame Atuwatse III, with Lagos Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu as special guest. The event coincided with the night of the AMVCA, so it’s prescence barely felt.
Iwe Ala: An Ojude Oba Story, produced by ComeOnNaija (Afamefuna) and directed by Adeoluwa Owu, follows a tailoring dynasty torn apart by legacy and betrayal, set against the Ojude Oba festival. Cast includes Mercy Aigbe, Eniola Ajao, Owobo Ogunde, Dele Odule, and Farooq Oreagba. Its private screening was held for former President Olusegun Obasanjo, hosted by Mercy Aigbe, days after the 2026 Ojude Oba festival concluded. Both production teams made the same calculation: the first audience you show a film to signals to the wider public how seriously to take it. A king and a former president in two separate screening rooms in the same week, for two films opening on the same date, is a deliberate marketing posture.
3. Nollywood Mourns Alexx Ekubo — The Films That Define His Legacy
Alexx Ekubo died on May 12, 2026, at Evercare Hospital in Lagos. He was 40. The cause was advanced metastatic kidney cancer. Born Alex Ikenna Ekubo-Okwaraeke in Port Harcourt, he came to Nollywood through the pageantry route — first runner-up at Mr Nigeria 2010 — and built a screen career across more than a decade that covered comedy, drama, and ensemble blockbusters. His final major screen appearance was in Afamefuna: An Nwa Boi Story. His most commercially visible role was in Omo Ghetto: The Saga alongside Funke Akindele. In 2020, he was named among the Most Influential People of African Descent under 40. He was the face of Yemi Alade’s global hit Johnny. In the weeks since his passing, the industry has been curating the films that show the range of what he left behind.
4. Monica 1&2 Hits 59 Million YouTube Views
Monica 2 has reached 22 million views on YouTube, pushing the franchise combined to a near 60m views and thereby cementing Uche Montana as a hit maker of Nigerian Movies On YouTube
The commercial question is straightforward: YouTube’s ad revenue model returns significantly less per viewer than theatrical or SVOD. A film with 22 million YouTube views may generate less producer revenue than one selling 80,000 cinema tickets.
Also, does this mean we have a new generation watching Modern Nigerian films or rather, a generation being conditioned to expect free access? Both things are true at once, and perhaps in five years, the industry will have felt the impact of both assumptions.
5. Fatimah Binta Gimsay Wraps Black Market
Fatimah Binta Gimsay has wrapped her debut theatrical feature with the working title Black Market, co-produced with Nora Awolowo of Red Circle. Via videos posted from set, the film was shot in Abeokuta and will feature Teniola Aladese, Linda Sulaimon,Susan Pajaowk and Omowunmi Dada. Gimsay is the founder of Hello July Films and has over 40,000 minutes of primetime television writing credits across Battleground, Riona, MTV Shuga Naija Season 5, Tinsel, Slum King, and Checkout. Her short films include Ijo (2022, international festivals) and Fine Girl (2025, Tokyo Short Film Festival).
By The Numbers
₦100M Efunroye cumulative gross — crossed June 4, fifth week in cinemas
This is Faithia Williams Balogun’s first cinema release as a producer and lead. The film assembled one of the largest casts of established Yoruba screen names — Odunlade Adekola, Mercy Aigbe, Femi Adebayo, Saidi Balogun, Ibrahim Chatta, Eniola Ajao, Foluke Daramola, and others. It carried a promotional message built around cultural pride and decency. It opened on Workers’ Day, with Workers’ Day framing. And it opened to ₦29.5 million, a nice but underwhelming number per star calibre tracking.
Faithia Williams, in the 4th week of her cinema, publicly called out cinema operators for scheduling the film at late-night and midday slots, arguing it was limiting audience access and interaction. Privately, operators disputed it, saying the movie showtimes reflected its current demand power. And also reinforces what Nigerian producers in a theatrical market need to learn that screen allocation is governed almost entirely by opening weekend velocity.
The ₦100 million milestone, reached in week five with 23 screens remaining, confirms the film has an audience. What the trajectory also confirms is that the audience was not going to the cinema on the weekend. That gap — between consumer timing and opening-weekend behaviour — is the real question Efunroye leaves behind.
REACTION RADAR
What I’m Watching: Tell It No More now showing on YouTube
While the theatrical and streaming conversations consume most of the industry’s bandwidth, the most interesting thing I watched this week arrived quietly on YouTube. Tell It No More — directed by Chukwu Martin, written by and starring Temilolu Fosudo alongside Martha Ehinome Orhiere and Wumi Tuase-Fosudo — is doing something that a lot of Nigerian productions are not: building genuine genre craft with a limited footprint and a sharp, confident creative sensibility.
The How to Get Away with Murder reference embedded in the work is not accidental. It is a statement of creative intention — a signal that the people behind this project are in active dialogue with global legal thriller conventions, and are confident enough in their own execution to invite that comparison. That is a meaningful creative posture, and it shows on screen. The writing by Fosudo has a precision to it. The performances hold.
Tell It No More is the kind of project that gets discussed in industry circles six months after it deserved to be. Go watch it now.
BOX OFFICE RADIO
Now Streaming: The Ileya 2026 Box Office Episode
Box Office Radio, Shock Africa’s weekly podcast on the business of Nigerian cinema, has released its Ileya 2026 box office episode. The episode covers the full results from the Eid el-Kabir holiday window — which titles performed, which underperformed, and what the numbers say about where the market is heading in the second half of 2026. Figures and full breakdown inside the episode.
Now streaming exclusively on Spotify. Listen here:
This week’s edition was late due to some publishing setbacks, but do not miss new editions of Nollywood Watch Weekly, which officially drops every single twice in a week.
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See You On The Next One!
