In a bid to expand its library on Nollywood content, iROKOtv will introduce Omoni Oboli’s Wives on Strike to its subscribers today. Released in 2016, Wives on Strike reportedly was a box office hit, recouping 15 million naira in its first weekend at the cinema and became the first ever Nollywood movie to make such a record.
For iROKOTv, this reinstates the streaming platform’s brand ethos, locally dubbed “Netflix of Africa” and its drive towards being a streaming home for Nollywood movies. That said, the platform hasn’t offered a fresh slate movie content in the past several months, and its subscribers are not having it.
When I browsed through the comments on the announcement of the availability of Wives on Strike, the mass consensus was iROKOTv’s habitual uploading of old movies. People want to see fresh stuff, and the service isn’t delivering in that regard. As a subscriber of the platform myself, I can attest to this restocking of Nollywood content with old titles.
Aside its slate of original programming, which includes a proliferation of chick flicks and rom-coms, the movie department needs a fresh injection of content to make it more competitive in the streaming landscape. Following its involvement in a copyright infringement scandal, iROKOTv needs to find a way to restore consumer confidence. And it can start with its movies.
When Bernard Dayo isn’t writing about pop culture, he’s watching horror movies and reading comics and trying to pretend his addiction to Netflix isn’t a serious condition.
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