Ije grosses N47m @ the cinemas

Chineze Anyaene’s multiple award winning movie, “Ïje: The Journey” has maintained the lead in the Nigerian box office, grossing a huge sum of N47 million from six cinemas across the country.

But Anyaene said, she is not really sure in respect of how much the movie has grossed so far since it’s still running at the cinemas.

During the first month of its premiere in July 30,  at Silverbird Cinemas, the blockbuster is said to have grossed over N25 million,  beating the record set by Stephanie Okereke’s “Through the Glass”, which grossed only N10 million, during the first-three weeks of  its premiere at the same venue.

The latest hint emanate from Ozone Cinemas, Yaba, where the blockbuster is described as the “longest running movie in cinema.

Ije , according to the General Manager of the outfit, Mr Patrick Lee has grossed over N10 million,  to emerge the third most successful movies ever shown in that cinema in terms of revenue generation and  the number of movie bluffs that thronged the cinema to see the movie.

Mr Lee, made this disclosure last weekend, while speaking at the 2nd anniversary of the establishment of Ozone cinemas.

He said, among the Nigerian  movies show in Ozone this year, including “Through the Glass” produced by Stephanie Okereke , Kunle Afolayan’s “Figurine” and “Kajola, Ïje” came top, grossing over N10 million in three months.

“Since this year, we have shown  movies like “Figurine”, “Through the Glass” , “Kajola” and “Ije” which is the most successful of all of them. Ije is the longest running movie here(Ozone), grossing over N10 million. In  terms of revenue generation, it’s the second and in terms of number of number of people who have watched the movie it’s the third.” he stressed.

According to the Ozone Cinemas boss, ‘very few people have come out after watching Ije, and described it as a bad movie. In his prediction, Ije will overtake “Avatar”  as the second best selling movie in Ozone.

Ije was shown in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt. And it became the longest running movie in most cinema houses.

In Ozone, the General Manager of the outfit said, they witnessed a situation where they had repeat audience  who were not tired of watching the movie. But despite the success it recorded at Ozone, the movie was pulled out of that  cinema house last Thursday and replaced with the latest movie in town, ‘Anchor Baby.” It hopes to return to the cinema from December and it will run for two weeks.

The producer said, she has a plan to move the award-winning movie to Kenya, Ghana, Mexico and the United Kingdom, confirming that Ije has been shown consistently at the six notable cinema houses  in the country.