The history of Nollywood: from Living in Bondage to Netflix and record box office

The history of Nollywood is usually told as one story: a trader with unsold VHS tapes made Living in Bondage in 1992 and an industry was born. That is broadly true, but it leaves out the Yoruba theatre and film tradition that came first. This guide covers the history of Nollywood from those roots through the home-video boom, the name itself, the return of cinemas and the streaming era, with sources for each stage. Current as of September 2026.

By Editorial Team

The short answer

• Roots: Yoruba travelling theatre, especially Hubert Ogunde’s company, and Nigerian celluloid films of the 1970s and 1980s.
• The breakthrough: Living in Bondage (1992–93), an Igbo-language thriller made straight for VHS, produced by Kenneth Nnebue and directed by Chris Obi Rapu.
• The name: “Nollywood” spread after New York Times articles in 2002.
• The scale: in 2009 UNESCO reported that Nigeria made 872 films in 2006, more than the United States and second only to India.
• Today: cinemas, streaming and record box office hits sit alongside the older direct-to-video tradition.

Before Nollywood: theatre and celluloid

Nigerian screen storytelling did not begin in 1992. Writing in Africa Is a Country in September 2026, Jummai Bulama-Ashebu traces it to the Yoruba travelling theatre tradition. Its modern form is usually linked to Hubert Ogunde, whose touring company performed across Nigerian cities in the 1950s and 1960s. That tradition moved into celluloid film in the 1970s and 1980s. She cites Moses Olaiya’s Mosebolatan (1985) as one of Nigeria’s first true blockbusters and says Yoruba filmmakers had already moved to VHS by 1988.

Next door, Ghanaian producers began making video films a few months before the Nigerians, in the late 1980s, according to the scholar Jonathan Haynes.

How the history of Nollywood changed in 1992: Living in Bondage

The turning point in the history of Nollywood was Living in Bondage. Britannica describes it as a film directed by Chris Obi Rapu and starring Kenneth Okonkwo and Nnenna Nwabueze. A struggling businessman sacrifices his wife to a satanic cult to get rich. It was released straight to VHS.

The producer, Kenneth Nnebue, was a Lagos trader who imported VHS tapes and distributed foreign films. According to Bulama-Ashebu, when the tapes stopped selling he put an original story on them. She reports that the film cost ₦150,000 and sold more than 100,000 copies in its first weeks. She also says Nnebue had already produced at least 27 Yoruba-language films. These figures come from her account and are not independently verified.

Her conclusion is useful: Living in Bondage was not the first Nigerian video film, but it created the “template”, a direct-to-video business model that the industry copied for two decades. Films were shot cheaply, sold on cassette (and later on disc) and watched at home rather than in cinemas.

By 2005, Haynes wrote, Nigerian producers were complaining that average sales had fallen to 20,000 copies per title. That was still four times what Ghanaian producers sold. A big home market had helped Nigeria’s industry outgrow its neighbours.

Where the name “Nollywood” came from

The word was coined by foreign journalists, not by the industry. In a 2005 essay republished by Africiné, Haynes wrote that “Nollywood” “apparently first appeared in an article by Matt Steinglass in the New York Times in 2002”. It reached a much wider audience through Norimitsu Onishi’s New York Times article of 16 September 2002, “Step Aside, L.A. and Bombay, for Nollywood”.

Haynes notes two objections: the name was imposed by outsiders, and it hides the diversity of Nigerian film, which includes Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa and English-language production. The Hausa industry in Kano has its own nickname, Kannywood, which Haynes saw as a sign of its deliberate separateness. He argued the name stuck anyway because it captured the industry’s ambition to sit on the world stage.

2009: “second-largest film industry”

The often-repeated claim that Nollywood is the world’s second-largest film industry comes from a UNESCO survey. UN News reported in May 2009 that India’s industry made 1,091 feature films in 2006, Nigeria 872 and the United States 485.

Two caveats matter. The ranking counts the number of films, not money: Nigeria’s 872 were all video productions. And the same survey found that about 99% of screenings in Nigeria took place in informal settings such as homes, because the country had “virtually no formal cinemas”. It also found that about 56% of Nollywood films were in local languages and 44% in English.

The return of cinemas

Modern multiplexes brought Nigerians back to cinemas in the 2000s. Silverbird Cinemas says it opened in 2004 at the Silverbird Galleria on Victoria Island, Lagos. Other chains followed, and Nollywood films made for cinema release began competing with Hollywood titles at home.

That shift created a measurable box office. Since 2018, figures have been compiled through Comscore and published by the Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria and distributors. Records keep being broken, especially by Funke Akindele’s films, as we track in our guide to the highest-grossing Nollywood films. The Wedding Party (2016) is still in that all-time top 10.

The streaming era

In September 2018 Netflix bought worldwide rights to Genevieve Nnaji’s Lionheart before its Toronto premiere, making it “the first Netflix original film from Nigeria”, Variety reported. Lionheart later became Nigeria’s first Oscar submission and was disqualified, as we explain in our Nigeria Oscar entry guide.

In 2019 the original film got a sequel, Living in Bondage: Breaking Free, directed by Ramsey Nouah. It won Best Overall Movie at the 2020 AMVCA.

The streaming boom has cooled since. In January 2024 Amazon Prime Video stopped commissioning new originals in Africa and the Middle East, while continuing projects already approved, TechCrunch reported, citing Deadline. In January 2025, Pulse Nigeria said reports suggested Netflix had also stopped commissioning Nigerian originals. We have not seen a Netflix statement confirming that, and Nigerian titles still appear on the service. Our Netflix Top 10 explainer shows how to check whether a title is really charting.

Nollywood on the world stage

Recent years have brought new kinds of recognition. In 2025, Akinola Davies Jr’s My Father’s Shadow became the first Nigerian title in the Cannes Film Festival’s official selection. The UK then chose it as its Oscar entry, Punch reported, and it won Best Movie at the 2026 AMVCA. The home-video model has not disappeared, but Nigerian films now also travel through festivals, cinemas and global platforms.

What to watch

Look out for festival announcements, Nigeria’s next Oscar selection and box office records over the December holidays, when recent records such as Behind the Scenes’ ₦129.5 million Boxing Day have been set. More in our Nollywood and Movies & TV sections.

Sources

• Africa Is a Country: Who started Nollywood? (September 2026)
• Britannica: Living in Bondage
• Africiné: Jonathan Haynes, “Nollywood: What’s in a Name?” (first published 2005)
• New York Times: Step Aside, L.A. and Bombay, for Nollywood (16 September 2002)
• UN News: Nigeria surpasses Hollywood as world’s second largest film producer (5 May 2009)
• Silverbird Cinemas: About
• Variety: Netflix buys Lionheart (7 September 2018)
• TechCrunch: Prime Video discontinues local originals in Africa and Middle East (18 January 2024)
• Pulse Nigeria: Nollywood without Netflix and Prime (13 January 2025)
• Punch: UK picks My Father’s Shadow for Oscars (14 October 2025)

Featured image: Photo: Kaizenify / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0