Oppenheimer, Barbie face off in Nigerian cinemas, but is there room for Òrìṣà?

<p>Do Nigerian audiences have enough in their pockets to watch a doll, a destroyer and a deity?</p>, <span>Oppenheimer, Barbie and Òrìṣà have all debuted in Nigerian cinemas on July 21, 2023</span>, <h2>After weeks of intense headbutting in the global market and the internet, Barbie and Oppenheimer have finally started screening in cinemas worldwide on Friday, July 21, 2023.</h2>, <p>Barbie is gloriously pink, Oppenheimer is tragically dark, but both films have become cultural touchstones expected to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars globally.</p>, <p>Barbie, especially, has funded a viral campaign whose marketing spend definitely has to be enough to rival the annual national budget of a third-world country or two.</p>, <p>The same-day release of the two Hollywood blockbusters is already creating a crisis of choice for audiences around the world, and a feverish internet crossover sensation dubbed Barbenheimer.</p>, <p>The head-to-head battle of which film makes more — or which one audiences prefer to see first — will also move to Nigerian cinemas where they've started screening.</p>, <p>Barbie may already have a leg up, following a glossy marketing campaign in Nigeria that included a beach party, a fancy brunch event, a slumber party and a July 20 premiere that created online buzz, even though for the fashion more than the film.</p>, <p>The result of this match-up won't be clear until the Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria (CEAN) releases the ticket sales figures for both films' openings next week, but there's a local production getting buried by Barbenheimer.</p>, <p>Kola Odunlade's Òrìṣà (Deity) has also started screening for audiences in cinemas on the same day as Barbie and Oppenheimer. The film is a Yoruba epic projected to make waves in the same fashion as Femi Adebayo's King of Thieves, which also starred Odunlade, in 2022.</p>, <p>King of Thieves was a sleeper hit and raked in ₦320.8 million in the cinemas, rising to become the seventh highest-grossing Nollywood film of all time — but Òrìṣà ma