A faith-based Nollywood sequel is rewriting Nigeria’s box office record books. “Agbara Nla: The Return,” the modernized revival of Mount Zion Film Productions’ 1993 Yoruba Christian classic, opened on October 1 — Nigeria’s Independence Day — and preview screenings alone pulled in more than ₦71 million from over 12,000 ticket sales, the largest single-day preview gross ever recorded for a Nollywood film in West Africa.

The film went on to top the national box office chart for its opening week, outearning wide releases including “Star Lomo,” the re-released “Avengers: Endgame,” and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” according to tracking reported by Vanguard and Nairametrics. Lagos accounted for just over half of the film’s early revenue, with the broader South-West region — Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Osun and Ondo — generating nearly 77 percent of total earnings.

Co-director Damilola Mike-Bamiloye, son of Mount Zion founder Mike Bamiloye, announced the milestone on Instagram, writing, “LORD! WE GIVE YOU THE GLORY!!!” and adding, “THANK YOU, NIGERIA. NUMBER 1 MOVIE OF THE WEEK.”

The film revives the story of Isawuru, a role Mike Bamiloye first played in 1993 at around age 30, when makeup and powdered hair were used to age him into the elderly character. Now 60, Bamiloye returns to the role without the disguise. Damilola Mike-Bamiloye told Premium Times the production “bring[s] the same story but presenting it in a modernised way… adapted to reflect contemporary realities,” noting the remake took roughly three weeks to shoot and had been under discussion within the family for about four years before his father agreed to revisit it.

The film’s success has not come without friction. After critics accused Mount Zion of using the film to disparage traditional Yoruba spirituality, Joshua Bamiloye, another of the filmmaker’s sons, pushed back publicly. “MZ doesn’t demonize Yoruba culture. It celebrates it; the colors, the language, the proverbs, and the royalty,” he said, arguing the film frames its conflict differently than critics suggest. “You framed this as ‘Yoruba spirituality versus foreign religion.’ We never did. We frame it as Light versus Darkness, and Darkness has no nationality,” he added, according to Legit.ng.

The film has also stirred strong reactions inside cinemas, with viral social media videos showing audience members singing and praying during screenings. One widely shared post described the experience in spiritual terms: “This is not a movie; it’s an overflow of Heaven, a release of revival, a conduit of outbreak.”

The record-breaking run arrives amid a broader boom in faith-based Nigerian cinema, with recent releases such as “What About Us” and “Onobiren: A Woman’s Story” also posting strong openings this year, though neither matched “Agbara Nla’s” numbers. For Mount Zion, a ministry-rooted production house that has been making Christian films in Nigeria since the 1980s, the result marks a rare crossover moment — a faith film outperforming major international blockbusters at the Nigerian box office, and a reminder of how deep audience appetite for Nollywood’s gospel-driven storytelling still runs more than three decades after the original “Agbara Nla” first reached screens.

Sources: Vanguard, Nairametrics, Premium Times, Legit.ng, Brand Communicator