Torgah tv studios

Looking at the December cinema lineup, this is shaping up to be one of the most competitive and heated release windows Nollywood has had in a while.

The two major forces going head to head are Funke Akindele and Toyin Abraham, both gearing up for December releases.

For Toyin Abraham specifically, I am genuinely happy for her.

The PR structure she has been building around this release is remarkable, and honestly, that is the beautiful thing about Nollywood.

No matter what people throw at you, there is always a way to put yourself out there and keep pushing.

She has faced online resistance leading up to this.

Back on the 4th of September, when she first announced her release date, some people accused her of copying the concept of Akindele's 2025 film, with some calling her a copycat and questioning whether the timing was intentional.

She did not let that slow her down.

Her film, Bestie, is scheduled for a nationwide cinema release on the 16th of December, right in the heart of the festive season box office window.

And on Monday, the 14th of September, she made her biggest move yet, unveiling legendary actor Pete Edochie as part of the cast.

She confirmed he will play the role of Papa Ngozi.

She announced it on Instagram with a video co shared with Edochie's page, calling him, in her words, a legend and a GOAT.

The announcement generated thousands of reactions within hours.

Now, what is really driving this move for Toyin Abraham?

Pete Edochie commands an enormous, deeply loyal following, particularly across South East Nigeria and among the Igbo diaspora worldwide.

HIs career stretches back to the early 1960s and He has also been unusually visible in the news lately.

He recently appeared on comedian Isbae U's online show, Curiosity Made Me Ask, where he made headlines for declaring he has no favourite actor because he considers himself bigger than every single one of his colleagues.

He added that anybody who feels they are on his level should not hesitate to say so publicly.

That episode has been trending for days, and even fellow actor Yemi Solade weighing in with his own claim of having started acting before he did.

Whatever side of that debate you fall on, one thing is clear, the man is dominating timelines right now, and Toyin Abraham has timed his casting reveal to come right in the middle of that wave of attention.

That is smart and calculated marketing.

Toyin Abraham already has a big box office track record .

Her 2024 release, Alakada: Bad and Boujee, crossed half a ₦1bn, and her 2025 directorial debut, Oversabi Aunty, became the first Nollywood directorial debut in history to cross a ₦1bn at the box office.

It earned her the National Film and Video Censors Board's Box Office Champion award.

Given that trajectory, I believe Bestie has a strong shot at crossing a billion naira this year too.

December is going to be hot, and Toyin Abraham looks like she has come fully prepared for the fight.

Benneth Nwankwo.
15th September 2026.

11 hours ago | [YT] | 0

Torgah tv studios

The beauty of Nollywood is that creativity can pay your bills.

If you are creative enough, almost anything can put food on your table, and in some cases, plenty of money in your pocket.

Last 2 years, while filming, our story required a snake.

The producer first considered a toy snake.

Another option on the table was adding the snake in post-production through CGI.

But we dropped that idea in favour of using a real python instead, for authenticity.

I started making inquiries about snake handlers, and almost everybody I spoke to pointed me to the same man.

His name is Yahaya Audu.

I checked his profile online, reached him on the phone, and learned he has been handling snakes for Nollywood productions for more than 8 years.

He is widely regarded as one of the best in the industry, with no recorded incident of a snake biting anyone on his sets, and no accidents with his animals.

He is a professionally trained handler.

Some people even allege he uses juju to control them so calmly, but that story is for another day.

Here is why I am telling you this.

For Yahaya Audu, snakes are essentially paid actors.

Hiring one costs between ₦70,000 and ₦200,000 per day, depending on the snake and the scene.

He sends you pictures and videos in advance so you can pick the exact one your film needs, and he even has a cobra available.

This is how the man makes his living, and he has supplied snakes to almost every Nollywood set that has ever needed one.

If there are 10 movies with a snake scene, chances are he worked on 8 of them.

You too, reading this, can build something similar around your own niche.

It does not have to be snakes.

If you have access to monkeys, they can be trained into working actors.

People will pay good money for that.

The same goes for tortoises, or dogs.

Dogs especially stand out to me as an area Nollywood has barely explored.

In Hollywood, professionally trained animals have been part of the industry for close to a century.

Carl Spitz trained Terry, the Cairn Terrier who played Toto in The Wizard of Oz back in 1939, using silent hand signals he developed.

A dog named Daisy appeared in over 50 Hollywood films through the 1930s and 40s, built almost around the Blondie franchise.

Companies like Animal Actors of Hollywood, founded in 1970, and Gentle Jungle, now on its 3rd generation of trainers within the same family, have spent decades supplying trained animals to major productions.

Gentle Jungle has worked on 6 Oscar winning Best Picture films.

Nollywood has little to nothing like that yet.

That gap is exactly the kind of opportunity you that is reading this could take advantage of.

It only requires creativity, courage, and patience to train properly.

Do it well, and Nollywood will pay you for it, the same way it is already paying a man in Asaba for his snakes.

Jay and mikey series is still going on

Jacob mensah.
14th September 2026.

1 day ago | [YT] | 0

Torgah tv studios

I have been reading, and honestly laughing a little, over the trending controversy around veteran actress and producer Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde.

For one, I think everyone should watch the full clip with an open mind, especially those who feel she was being tribalistic.

But I will be sincere with you.

I think everyone has a point.

Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde recounted working on an African inspired production abroad, where an Igbo actor on set was clearly struggling with his Yoruba dialogue.

She said she noticed the difficulty and approached the production, hoping they might bring in native speakers or offer some support to get the language right.

Instead, she says she was told that the production simply did not care about getting the language accurate.

Her own reaction, in her words, was that the struggle for proper African representation clearly continues, even in productions meant to celebrate our stories.

Some people have reacted saying She was being tribalistic, largely because Omotola is Yoruba, yet she built a significant part of her career playing Igbo characters.

And her role as Agomma being one of the most memorable.

So the argument goes, if she is now the one raising concern about an Igbo actor's Yoruba, does she hold herself to that same standard when she plays Igbo roles.

Well if you feel her comments has a tribal undertone, I understand where that feeling comes from, especially given her own history playing outside her ethnic background without, this level of native speaker scrutiny being publicly raised about her own performances.

That is a fair observation.

But if you see this from the professional angle, she is also right.

Getting language authenticity correct in a film matters.

This is something I have felt strongly about for a long time.

Igbo language has multiple dialects.

Somone from many parts of Enugu does not speak exactly Igbo exactly the way someone from many parts of Imo or Anambra does, and I have watched Igbo language films where supposed villagers from the same community somehow speak entirely different versions of our language.

That kind of detail bothers me when I catch it, because it breaks the illusion the film is trying to build.

So if that is the standard Omotola was pushing for here, insisting a production actually invest in getting an African language right rather than shrugging it off, I do not think that instinct is wrong.

Where I think the criticism has more weight is in the question of consistency, whether the same energy she brought to correcting someone else's Yoruba has ever been turned back on her own portrayals of Igbo characters.

That is a fair question to ask.

So this is a tricky situation, and I do not think anyone should be quick to call her tribalistic.

Nothing in her career suggests it.

But I also do not think the people questioning the consistency of her standard are wrong to ask the question either.

This is my balanced take on the matter.

Yes I am sitting on the fence just as Tony Abulu

Happy Sunday.

Jacob Mensah.
13th September 2026.

2 days ago | [YT] | 0

Torgah tv studios

Secrets of the Shadows full movie is now showing on jacob wahala studio. Please go watch now.

https://youtu.be/Qj574oOh4RM?is=iHT0E...

3 days ago | [YT] | 0

Torgah tv studios

It appears that Nora Awolowo’s attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the largest audience attending a film screening at a single location might actually be successful.

The idea is to have 50,000 people gather at Tafawa Balewa Square in Lagos on 26 September 2026 to watch Black Market, all from the same location, in what could become one of the biggest single film viewing events we have seen in the world.

And as of about 5 days ago, 45,253 people had already purchased their tickets out of the 50,000 target.

That means there are fewer than 5,000 tickets left.

When I first spoke about this, I said that if it became successful, it could become a new template for us Nollywood filmmakers, distributors and even cinema chains.

Not that we would suddenly start seeing 50,000 person film screenings everywhere, but that it could show what is possible when a film is packaged as an experience and people are given a reason to come together for it.

And now, looking at what Nora and her team have put together for Black Market, I am even more interested in what this could mean.

Black Market is directed by Fatimah Binta Gimsay, who also co wrote the film with Abdul Tijani-Ahmed.

Nora Awolowo and Nicole Ofoegbu are among the producers, with a cast that includes Lateef Adedimeji, Linda Ejiofor, Ibrahim Yekini, Omowunmi Dada, Susan Pwajok, Scarlet Gomez, Uzor Arukwe and others.

The film follows five women involved in a cross border fuel smuggling business.

Their business is going well until a rival kidnaps the daughter of one of them, putting everything they have built at risk.

It is a crime story that centers around money, survival, family, rivalry and the realities that push people into black market.

Nora had earlier announced the crowdfunding phase for the film and continued to build attention around it.

Now, we are seeing several brands and organisations come on board around the screening, including MTN, PUMA, Swoop, PlaystreetNG, Oraimo and Shuttlers, as well as support from the Lagos State Ministry of Culture.

I have seen some questions people are asking.

If you are putting 50,000 people in one location, there are serious logistical questions that have to be answered.

How are these people getting there?

How are they getting back?

How do you manage security?

How do you manage entry?

What happens if there is an emergency?

What happens if it rains?

How do you move thousands of people out of the venue after the film?

And interestingly, Shuttlers has come in as the mobility partner, with arrangements being made to help transport a very large number of attendees.

And I think we need to pay more attention to what Nora is doing.

The last time I wrote about this, I said that if Nora succeeds, I would like to see us in other parts of Nigeria think about how we can adapt the idea.

I still believe that.

It does not have to be 50,000 people.

Someone could do 10,000 in Enugu.

Someone could do 20,000 in Port Harcourt.

Someone could do 10,000 in Abuja.

Someone could organise a large watch party in Asaba, Benin, Ibadan, Onitsha or Kano.

The idea to turning a film screening into a major event is something I find very interesting.

Because if you have a film and you can convince thousands of people to pay to come and experience that film together, you are not only distributing a movie.

You are creating an event around the movie.

And for an industry that is constantly looking for ways to finance films, market films and get audiences to show up for films, I think there is something worth studying.

This is why I am genuinely happy for Nora and her team.

I am happy because I know this did not start with 45,253 people buying tickets.

There was a point when it was just an idea.

And now we are less than 5,000 tickets away from seeing whether the 50,000 person target can actually happen.

I would personally love to try something like this someday.

Maybe not 50,000 people.

But bringing a large number of people together in one location for a film I have made, turning the viewing into an actual experience and building sponsors, entertainment, vendors and other activities is something that genuinely excites me.

And if Nora succeeds on 26 September, I hope this does not end with everybody simply saying, “Congratulations, she broke the record.”

I hope other fellow filmmakers actually look at what she did and ask themselves what they can take from it.

Congratulations to everyone involved so far.

Now, let us see what happens on 26 September.

3 days ago | [YT] | 0

Torgah tv studios

Someone asked me if it was true that filmmakers are on YouTube because of the exchange rate, and that according to veteran filmmaker Kunle Afolayan, Nollywood producers may leave YouTube if the naira strengthens significantly against the dollar.

Kunle Afolayan made this point on the Nidacity Podcast with former Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun, arguing that the reason people now say things like, I hit a million views, I get $10,000 , comes down purely to the exchange rate.

In his words, if the dollar drops, everybody will run away from YouTube, because that exchange rate is what makes the platform look more profitable than it actually is.

I respectfully disagree with him.

I do not think anybody is on YouTube primarily because of the exchange rate.

In fact, from where I sit, if the exchange rate actually harmonised, that would be good news for us.

The cost of production would drop alongside it.

The cost of living would drop too.

If you are currently paying people in millions, you might eventually be paying them in thousands instead, because the naira value of everything shifts together.

I think YouTube simply became the one platform available to us that was free, independent, and came with far less gatekeeping.

It was the democratic nature of YouTube that made it home for Nollywood, as against platforms where you needed a distributor, or needed to know somebody, just to get your film considered at all.

Kunle Afolayan also argued that while YouTube offers flexibility, platforms like Netflix and Prime provide better opportunities.

I cannot argue that those platforms, when they do pick up a project, offer global visibility and stronger pay.

But my question is, how many opportunities have they actually provided?

Since entering Nigeria in 2016, Netflix has licensed roughly 283 films total, as of last count, spread across nearly a decade, alongside about less than 15 original commissions.

And that flow has been shrinking.

In the first half of 2023, Netflix added 19 Nigerian films.

That dropped to 10 in the first half of 2024.

By the first half of 2025, it had fallen to just less than 8, all of them geo-blocked outside Nigeria.

Reports from early 2025 confirmed both Netflix and Amazon Prime had effectively stopped commissioning new Nigerian originals, shifting instead to occasional post-theatrical licensing of films that had already proven themselves in cinemas first.

So across the better part of a decade, Netflix has offered somewhere around 283 opportunities to Nigerian filmmakers.

Meanwhile, on YouTube, not less than 30 films drop every weekend.

That is 30 films a week, which adds up to well over 2000 opportunities annually, for producers who would otherwise have no path at all into Netflix's shrinking, increasingly selective pipeline.

Every one of those YouTube uploads represents an opportunity Netflix or Prime simply could not have accommodated, whether by choice or by capacity.

Jacob Mensah.
11th September 2026.

4 days ago | [YT] | 0

Torgah tv studios

So I read a post the other day bashing Uzor Arukwe for going back to certain roles on YouTube, and accepting even Odogwu Parara roles again, despite what people described as a phenomenal performance in Colours of Fire, currently streaming on Netflix.

People were wondering why he should still be taking those kinds of roles at all.

Uzor Arukwe played Akinbode, a warrior from the dominant Blue tribe sent to hunt a beast believed to have been unleashed by a rival clan, only to uncover a much darker truth along the way.

That role earned him Best Lead Actor at the twelfth AMVCA this past May, beating out Lateef Adedimeji, William Benson, Kanayo O. Kanayo, and Femi Branch, a very competitive category.

People close to our industry have noted that Akinbode was a departure for him too, moving away from the commanding, larger than life "Odogwu" characters fans usually associate him with.

So yes, the man delivered.

I understand why people expected that success to change something about the roles he takes next.

But I do not think Nigerians want to accept that there are certain things we simply cannot afford to change yet, no matter how good a performance was.

How many big budget films do we actually make in a year, enough for an actor to take a handful of them and stay financially comfortable for the entire year?

The honest truth is this.

It is the commercial, everyday films, the ones dropping week by week on YouTube, that have kept Nollywood standing all these years.

Big budget productions remain limited in number.

It is the commercial films that keep actors fed, keep crew members fed, and hold together the entire loosely structured fabric of this industry.

Without those weekly YouTube releases, Nollywood would have collapsed a long time ago.

That is the honest truth, whether people want to hear it or not.

Unless people want hunger to finish him, Uzor cannot simply stick to cinema releases or big budget films alone, because those come around only a handful of times a year.

And realistically, how much do you think an actor actually takes home from one of those projects?

What actually sustains most actors in this industry is the commercial film, wrapped in 3 to 4 days, sometimes a full week, before moving straight on to the next project, the kind of work that pays bills and keeps things running month to month.

Showbiz is show, and it is business.

There is the show, the part most people criticising him only ever want to enjoy, the glamour, the awards and the AMVCA speech.

But what about the business side of it?

He still has to eat and has bills to pay.

And he has to keep taking roles to make that happen.

Yes, I agree that not every role is worth jumping on.

But at the same time, we need to be honest about where this industry actually stands right now.

Nollywood has not yet reached the point where an actor can afford to be extremely selective about roles, or about how many films they take on in a year.

Yes, a few actors manage to operate that way.

But how many, really?

And for the ones who do manage it, have you actually asked how they are sustaining themselves in between those selective, spaced out projects?

So take it easy on him.

Nollywood is not that simple a place to survive in.

You have to keep working, consistently, just to stay afloat.

And like everything else in this business, when you are trending and on top the smart thing to do is exploit that moment fully.

Milk your social currency for everything it is worth while it is there, because tomorrow, it may not be.

Jacob Mensah.
10th September 2026.

5 days ago | [YT] | 2

Torgah tv studios

A lot of younger generation filmmakers, myself included, do not bother ourselves with who started Nollywood.

The honest truth is this.

We think more about what we can actually do for Nollywood, how we access funding, distribution, and opportunities, than about relitigating a founding story nobody alive can fully accept.

It appears this argument almost always comes from the older generation.

I am yet to see a young filmmaker come out and argue passionately about who started Nollywood.

And no matter how you look at it, both sides will never agree.

There are basically two sides.

The Yoruba side of this points to something around 1992.

The Yoruba Traveling Theatre tradition, Alárìnjó, traces back to the 19th century.

Its modern form runs through filmmakers like Hubert Ogunde, Duro Ladipo, Kola Ogunmola, Moses Olaiya known as Baba Sala, and Adeyemi Afolayan known as Ade Love, men who were staging and recording performances decades before video film became a business.

The Igbo side of the argument centres on Kenneth Nnebue's Living in Bondage, released in 1992, the film that is widely credited with commercialising the format and turning it into the mass industry we now call Nollywood.

Others argue that before Nnebue ever made Living in Bondage, he had already produced at least 27 Yoruba language films, starting with Aje Ni Iya Mi in 1989.

This is an Igbo trader, based around the world, making Yoruba film , who then made one Igbo film that the world eventually decided was the beginning of everything.

Even the name Nollywood was not coined by a Nigerian at all.

It came from Norimitsu Onishi, a Japanese-Canadian journalist who was working for The New York Times.

He used the term in his September 2002 article titled “Step Aside, L.A. and Bombay, for Nollywood.”

Onishi himself later said that he did not necessarily coin the word personally.

He explained that the headline was written by a copy editor, although the word “Nollywood” appeared with his article for the first time.

There have also been claims that Nick Moran, a BBC journalist, may have used the term earlier, so the absolute origin of the word remains debated.

The best part of this argument which I agree most is from the immediate past President of Actors Guild of Nigeria, Emeka Rollas.

He weighed in on this debate a couple of years ago and his position was that no single tribe can honestly lay claim to owning Nollywood.

He said it is a Nigerian thing that simply happened to be commercialised.

This is not a debate with a clean, agreed-upon answer.

It is two different, legitimate histories, a theatrical tradition and a commercial breakthrough and arguing over which one deserves the crown.

This argument does nothing except pull us apart along ethnic lines.

This argument is more divisive than it is helpful to filmmakers.

What the older generation should be spending energy on is how to create more opportunities for young filmmakers and how the depleting distribution structures in Nollywood can be improved and restored.

I have never once read Hollywood, or even Bollywood, having this same public argument and documentaries dedicated to establishing whether it was a particular theatre group or a particular studio that established them.

It is becoming genuinely lame, and it looks worse every time it resurfaces.

Please, we should all do better, and retire this divisive argument that helps absolutely nobody.

Jacob Mensah.
9th September 2026.

6 days ago | [YT] | 1

Torgah tv studios

Yesterday I watched a video, a podcast conversation with Nollywood award winning actress and producer Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde, talking about her time in the industry.

One thing that stood out to me was her saying she has given Nollywood over 30 years, and in all that time, she has never once received a residual payment.

For anyone unfamiliar, a residual is a payment made to actors after a certain period, tied to how a film continues performing, streaming, syndication, reruns and that kind of thing.

Think of residuals like this.

You act in a movie and the producer pays you ₦500,000.

The movie is released, and years later, people are still showing or using that same movie.

If your agreement says you should receive extra money whenever the movie is reused or shown in certain ways, that extra money is called residuals.

So, your original payment is for doing the job.

Residuals are additional payments you can receive because your work continues to be used.

In simple words: “I was paid to make the movie, but because my work is still being used, I also get paid again under the agreed terms.”

That is what residuals mean in filmmaking.

It is usually written directly into the contract an actor signs.

This is a fairly standard practice in Hollywood, in parts of Bollywood, and in the Korean film industry too.

In her own words, she said she has only put in 5 years in Hollywood, yet every time she gets back from LA, her envelope is already packed with a pile of residuals waiting for her.

30 years in Nollywood, and she has never received a single envelope like that.

A lot of people in the comment section are asking why this is the case, with some saying Nollywood producers need to stop exploiting actors and do better.

But almost nobody is actually asking why this payment disparity exists.

A lot of people tend to view Nollywood as some entirely separate structure, floating outside the Nigerian economy.

But it is not. In most industries here, people are not paid by the hour the way they might be in the UK.

Whether it is mining or anything else, people are on fixed monthly pay, and Nollywood follows that same pattern.

What you earn in Nigeria will simply never match what you earn somewhere with economic stability and stronger purchasing power.

Someone working a comparable job in the UK or US is almost always going to out-earn someone doing the same work here, and we already know why that is.

Secondly, piracy has eaten so deep into this industry that producers are constantly left with next to nothing.

Back in the CD era, which is where Omotola's career actually began, before you had even sold a thousand legitimate copies, somebody in Alaba had already printed and pirated over 5000, selling them hot while you were still struggling to move your own stock.

Even now, in the YouTube era, I still do not understand why people pirate films that are already free to watch.

People download them anyway and dump them into Telegram groups for others to grab, and honestly, does that even make sense to you?

Then there is purchasing power.

In the US, people happily pay up to $20 a month for Netflix.

In Nigeria, where the minimum Netflix plan sits around ₦2,500, a lot of people still struggle to pay for it, and most end up sharing one login between several people.

You expect an industry operating under those conditions to be paying residuals?

You should really be asking first how many producers have even made back what they spent making the film, before we start talking about profit and let alone performance bonuses for actors.

Until the Nigerian economy improves, and we get serious about combating digital piracy, this conversation about residuals will remain mostly theoretical.

As long as we are still running on private investment the way we currently are, this is going to be a long journey.

Jacob mensah.
8th September 2026.

1 week ago | [YT] | 0

Torgah tv studios

Have you watched this amazing jacob mensah Flims if not please do and also subscribe.

https://youtu.be/0B-HvoQ3xAY?is=
BgzSEq6INnnE_ZKp

1 week ago | [YT] | 0