When Agesinkole 2 (also known as King of Thieves: Agesinkole 2) hit screens during the 2025 holiday season, something unusual happened in Nollywood. In just 12 days, the film raked in ₦417 million, yet it didn’t follow the same path as many recent blockbuster Nigerian movies that focus heavily on traditional city‑based cinema chains. Instead, Femi Adebayo positioned his film in community cinema screenings. This is a bold choice that turned heads, broke norms, and created a new kind of record in the industry.
A New Kind of Box‑Office Success
When people talk about big Nollywood hits in 2025, names like Funke Akindele’s Behind the Scenes and Toyin Abraham’s Oversabi Aunty usually come up first. Behind the Scenes became one of the fastest Nollywood films to cross massive box office numbers nationwide through standard cinema distribution, pulling in hundreds of millions of naira by being shown in major theatre chains across the country. Oversabi Aunty, meanwhile, also performed strongly in cinemas, drawing in large audiences and earning solid revenue.
To be precise, Funke Akindele’s BTS garnered ₦1.77 billion in 24 days, while Toyin Abraham’s Oversabi Aunty grossed ₦711.5 million in 18 days.
But Agesinkole 2 took a different route. Rather than depending mainly on the usual high‑end cinema screens concentrated in big cities like Lagos, Abuja, or Port Harcourt, Adebayo’s team deliberately prioritised community cinema screenings. These are smaller, local venues spread across towns, neighbourhoods, and informal screening hubs, especially in the Southwest region.
What “Community Cinema” Actually Means
Community cinema isn’t about big multiplexes or expensive tickets. It’s about making the film accessible to audiences where they live. In Lagos, tickets were priced at around ₦4,000, and outside major cities they were about ₦3,000. The affordable price made it much more accessible for everyday movie lovers compared with typical cinema ticket prices.
These screenings happened in local cultural centres, makeshift halls, and grassroots locations, allowing people from smaller towns and neighbourhood clusters to come together, watch the movie, and be part of a shared cultural experience. Instead of competing for limited showtimes in a few city movie theatres, Agesinkole 2 was everywhere at once in communities that often get overlooked.
Why This Strategy Worked
There are a few reasons this approach clicked:
First, it tapped into audiences that don’t always go to mainstream cinemas but love Yoruba storytelling and local epics. Agesinkole and its sequel tell culturally rich stories rooted in Yoruba myth and drama, and placing them close to home made them feel familiar and exciting.
Second, community cinema brings back the spirit of older days when neighbours would gather outdoors or in local halls to watch stories unfold together. It made watching Agesinkole 2 feel less like a single entertainment purchase and more like a shared community event. This sense of connection encouraged bigger turnout than many expected.
Finally, by avoiding the crowded competition for screens in big city cinemas where films like Behind the Scenes were fighting for the best showtimes, Adebayo’s team made sure Agesinkole 2 could saturate many smaller markets quickly. That meant the movie was shown in lots of places at once, rather than sitting on just a few screens in Lagos or Abuja, allowing revenue to pile up fast in ways that surprised even some industry watchers.
This was in sharp contrast to what several other filmmakers were publicly complaining about over the same holiday period. Big names like Toyin Abraham, Niyi Akinmolayan and Ini Edo, all of whom released movies in December alongside Oversabi Aunty and other titles, accused some cinema operators of unfair screening practices. They said their films were being given poor showtimes, like early morning or late‑night slots that few people attend, or were even advertised but not actually screened as promised.
Toyin Abraham, for example, openly questioned how a 10 a.m. show could attract crowds, and claimed that some cinemas were selling tickets only to redirect audiences into different screenings instead of hers.
These complaints highlighted how limited screens and uneven showtime allocations can hurt a film’s visibility and box office performance in crowded cinema chains.
In that environment, Agesinkole 2’s community cinema approach which focused on accessible local venues and guaranteed access to audiences helped it avoid the frustration and bottlenecks that some producers felt during the year’s busiest movie season.
Femi Adebayo’s Vision: More Than Numbers
Femi Adebayo didn’t just stumble into this success. In posts about the film’s run, he framed it as a movement and an attempt to redefine how Nollywood reaches audiences beyond the usual market. He spoke about faith, courage, and letting the film live among people instead of expecting them to all come to cinema halls.
This strategy isn’t a criticism of films like Behind the Scenes or Oversabi Aunty, which have performed impressively in their own right through traditional cinema channels. Instead, Agesinkole 2 highlights another truth about Nollywood, which is that success doesn’t always have to look the same. There isn’t only one path to making money or building momentum. For a film with strong cultural roots and widespread appeal, going to the people proved just as powerful as bringing the people to the cinema.
The Bigger Picture
What Agesinkole 2 shows is that Nollywood is still evolving. Some films will dominate traditional cinema screens and press headlines with massive national openings. Others will build grassroots movements that reach audiences outside the usual urban bubble. Both approaches matter. But in a country with such diverse tastes and varied access to entertainment infrastructure, Femi Adebayo’s community cinema idea is a reminder that ingenuity and understanding your audience can be just as important as big screens and big budgets.
