Netflix Has Quietly Halved Its Nollywood Acquisitions Three Years Running. The Industry Has Not Fully Processed This.

In the first half of 2023, approximately nineteen Nigerian titles appeared on Netflix. The number covered the full range of the platform’s Nigerian relationship at the time — post-theatrical acquisitions, direct-to-streaming productions, and originals commissioned specifically for the platform.

In the first half of 2024, that number fell to approximately ten.

In the first half of 2025, it fell to five.

The count has halved, then halved again. Each reduction has happened without a formal announcement from Netflix. No press conference, no strategy document, no statement to the Nigerian press explaining what changed and why. The platform simply acquired less, commissioned less, and made less noise about it. The industry noticed, debated it in the usual forums, and largely moved on — partly because the theatrical box office was performing so strongly that the streaming conversation felt less urgent, and partly because acknowledging the scale of the pullback required acknowledging something uncomfortable about the assumptions the industry had built around the streaming era.

Those assumptions were not unreasonable when they were formed. Netflix entered Nigeria in 2016 and spent the following years building a catalogue that included genuine commissioning relationships — productions funded directly by the platform, original series developed for a Nigerian audience. Its 2018 acquisition of Lionheart for a reported $3.8 million established streaming as serious business in this market. Amazon Prime Video followed. Showmax followed. The message was clear: global platforms wanted Nigerian content, Nigerian content could command real money, and the industry’s future included a significant streaming component alongside theatrical.

That message was true. It was also temporary, in ways that the industry did not fully price in.

Netflix’s current posture in Nigeria, based on the available evidence, is best described as selective acquisition rather than active commissioning. The platform appears to be licensing proven theatrical successes — Behind The Scenes going to Netflix at number one is the clearest example — rather than developing a pipeline of Nigerian originals. This is not the same thing as abandoning the market. It is a shift from the platform as funder to the platform as distributor, which has significantly different implications for the economics of production.

A platform-funded original gives a Nigerian producer budget certainty, a guaranteed distribution window, and the creative constraints that come with making content for a specific platform’s audience and algorithm. A licensing deal gives the producer none of that upfront — the film or series has to be financed, produced, and proven at the box office or through some other means first, and then the platform decides whether to acquire it at a price the platform controls. The risk is entirely on the production side. The platform captures upside without carrying downside.

That model is not bad for the productions that succeed at scale. Akindele’s theatrical numbers are sufficient to make her a licensing target regardless of what Netflix’s commissioning appetite looks like. For the mid-tier producer — the one making solid, commercially credible work that earns ₦150 million to ₦300 million at the box office — the licensing model offers nothing like what the commissioning model offered. And the commissioning model, for that tier of producer, has largely ceased to exist.

Amazon Prime Video’s pullback from African originals arrived at roughly the same time. The industry is now navigating a streaming landscape that looks fundamentally different from the one that was being described as recently as 2022. The platforms are present. Their chequebooks, for most of the market, are not.

READ ALSO: Showmax Is Shutting Down

The industry that built strategies around that chequebook needs new strategies. The theatrical market, which has delivered ₦15.6 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow further, offers a foundation those strategies can be built on. But the transition from “global platforms will fund Nigerian television” to “the theatrical market is the anchor and streaming is the licensing window” is a shift with real consequences for the producers who built their pipelines the other way around.

Processing it honestly is the first step toward building something more durable.