For years, the Nollywood box office has followed one rule: if you want a blockbuster, release in December. Filmmakers and distributors relied almost exclusively on the year-end festive window to drive record-breaking theatrical revenue.
  
However, the industry rulebook has now been rewritten with Agbara Nla: The Return, a Mount Zion Film Productions’ modern reimagining of the title, challenging the tradition. The film opened with N170.6 million, the biggest non-December opening in Nollywood history and the third-biggest opening in the nation’s film industry ever, behind only Everybody Loves Jenifa and Behind the Scenes. It also set records for the biggest October opening and the biggest opening for a faith-based film in Nigeria.
  
A remake of Mike Bamiloye, the gospel cinema pioneer’s 1993 classic, Agbara Nla, which is also known as “The Ultimate Power”, a Yoruba Christian film that became one of the defining productions of Nigeria’s faith-based movie industry 33 years ago.
  
Directed by Damilola and Joshua ‘Jay Mikee’ Mike-Bamiloye, both sons of Bamiloye, and released in cinemas on October 1, the film’s success is significant not only for its producers but also for an industry accustomed to concentrating its biggest theatrical releases around the festive season.
 
Preview screenings between September 25 and October 1 drew 12,134 admissions and about N70 million, before the film even opened nationwide. The result was the biggest first-day gross for a Nollywood movie, and Lagos alone accounted for 50.8 percent of its revenue.

With cinemas benefiting from increased leisure spending and family outings during December, filmmakers have often treated the festive season as the safest window for launching major productions.
  
More than a successful revival of a familiar story, the film’s opening has strengthened the case for a Nollywood in which blockbuster ambitions are not restricted to December, and where audience demand, rather than the calendar alone, helps determine a film’s commercial prospects.