Funke Akindele’s Behind The Scenes Smashes ₦200m at the Box Office in One Weekend

Funke Akindele’s latest film, Behind The Scenes, has crossed ₦200 million in its opening weekend, making it the biggest box office opening of 2025 so far. Not a month. Not quarter. The entire year to date. And it didn’t crawl there; it arrived loudly, confidently, and with receipts.

According to FilmOne Entertainment, the movie is now the first Nollywood release in 2025 to hit the ₦200m mark in its opening weekend, while also breaking five separate opening-weekend box office records and recording the highest cinema admissions of the year. For context, this isn’t just a “good run.” This is dominance.

Behind the Scenes tackles a deeply familiar theme: the black tax, a subject many Nigerian families quietly live with but rarely see handled head-on in mainstream cinema. The story places Scarlet Gomez at the centre, supported by a familiar cast: Iyabo Ojo, Destiny Etiko, Tobi Bakre, Uche Montana, Uzor Arukwe, Ini Dima-Okojie, Ibrahim Chatta, Mr Macaroni, Kamo State, Handi and Wanni Danbaki, among others. Even Funke Akindele herself appears onscreen.

FilmOne announced the milestone with a celebratory Instagram post, calling Akindele the “Queen of Box Office” and thanking audiences nationwide for filling cinemas and spreading the word. The distributor also confirmed that Behind The Scenes is still showing in cinemas across Nigeria, suggesting that the numbers are far from done climbing.

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What makes this moment more significant is that it didn’t come out of nowhere. Funke Akindele has been building toward this for years, quietly turning consistency into a weapon. Her previous film, Everybody Loves Jenifa, rewrote records. The movie surpassed her own earlier benchmark set by A Tribe Called Judah, which opened at ₦113 million. It went on to become the highest-grossing Nollywood film of all time, earning over ₦1.8 billion in Nigeria alone.

Everybody Loves Jenifa recorded 38,353 admissions, including advance screenings, crossed the ₦1 billion mark by late December 2024, and continued pulling crowds well into early 2025. That run changed expectations for what West African cinema could achieve commercially. Now, with Behind The Scenes, Akindele isn’t chasing her past success; she’s expanding it.

There’s also something important about the timing. In a year when Nollywood is still recalibrating cinema attendance, pricing, and audience behaviour, a film centred on social pressure and family obligation has managed to pull Nigerians back into theatres in massive numbers. That says something. Not just about star power, but about storytelling that feels close to home.

Funke Akindele’s ₦200m opening weekend isn’t just another headline—it’s a signal.

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It confirms her position as Nollywood’s most reliable box-office force, reinforces FilmOne’s distribution strength, and proves that Nigerian audiences will still show up when the story hits close to home. Behind The Scenes didn’t rely on spectacle alone; it leaned into relevance, familiarity, and emotional truth, and the numbers followed.

As the film continues its theatrical run, one thing is already clear: this isn’t just the biggest opening weekend of 2025 so far. It’s another chapter in a career that continues to redefine what commercial success looks like in Nollywood.