Black Market breaks Guinness World Record with 51,000 viewers at TBS

By Segun Adebayo

Nollywood has recorded a new milestone as Black Market, a feature film produced by Rixel Studios, has broken the Guinness World Record for the largest attendance at a film screening in a single location.

The record-breaking screening took place on Saturday at Tafawa Balewa Square (TBS), Lagos, where more than 51,000 people gathered to watch the film simultaneously.

Guinness World Records confirmed 51,000 viewers as the qualifying attendance after the screening.

The achievement surpasses the previous record of 43,624 people, set on October 4, 2015, when Felix Manalo was screened at the Philippine Arena in the Philippines.

The Guinness World Records website lists the Philippine event as the previous record holder.

PerSecondNews reports that although Lagos State Deputy Governor Obafemi Hamzat put the overall attendance at about 64,000, the Guinness qualification was based on viewers who remained from the beginning of the film to the end, resulting in the officially recognised figure of 51,000.

The event was the culmination of months of planning by Rixel Studios and its partners, who had initially announced plans to attract 50,000 people to TBS for the screening. Earlier reports had put the organisers’ broader target at as many as 75,000 attendees.

Black Market is Rixel Studios’ second feature film after Red Circle and was directed by Fatimah Binta Gimsay.

The film was written by Gimsay and Abdul Tijani-Ahmed and centres on five women involved in a cross-border smuggling operation whose lives are disrupted after the kidnapping of one of their daughters.

The film features Lateef Adedimeji, Linda Ejiofor-Suleiman, Omowunmi Dada, Scarlet Gomez, Teniola Aladese, Susan Pwajok, Ibrahim Yekini, popularly known as Itele, and Uzor Arukwe, among others.

The record-breaking premiere was organised by Rixel Studios in collaboration with FilmOne Studios, Signet Ring Studios and Switch Visuals Production, with the Lagos State Government supporting the initiative through the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture.

The gates opened at 2pm, with the red carpet commencing around 3pm before the main screening began at 7pm.

The programme also featured music, food, games and other entertainment activities for attendees ahead of the film.

Speaking before the event, executive producer Omowunmi Dada said the team deliberately chose the record attempt to make the premiere bigger than a conventional cinema outing and to create what she described as a cultural statement through Nigerian filmmaking.

With the Guinness confirmation, Black Market has now moved from an ambitious Nollywood record attempt to a documented world-record achievement, placing the Lagos screening ahead of the 2015 Philippine benchmark and giving Rixel Studios and its partners a new entry in the Guinness World Records books.