Alakada: Bad and Boujee, directed and produced by Toyin Abraham, will be released in December, and so will Funke Akindele’s Everybody Loves Jenifa. The two filmmakers behind some of the country’s most commercially successful films will once more be fighting for the top spot at the box office.
Last December, Akindele’s A Tribe Called Judah squared off with Abraham’s Ijakumo, emerging victorious as it became the first Nigerian film to gross a billion naira.
Alakada: Bad and Boujee is the fifth installment of the Alakada series which began in 2009. It centers on a young woman (Toyin Abraham) who assumes a false identity to keep with the crowd. Meanwhile, Akindele’s movie will be one of several offshoots of the Jenifa franchise which began in 2008 and captured the national imagination when it debuted in 2015 as a television series.
Last month, Abraham both acknowledged and articulated the rivalry that for years has gone unspoken between the two women:
“In those days of the Yoruba film industry, Funke Akindele was number one after the likes of Aunty Bukky [Bukky Wright] and Aunty Faithia [Faithia Balogun]. I was the next in line. The competition was much and with many gossips in between, we became competitors and persona non grata.”