Nollywood isn't asking for permission anymore.

The Black Book arrived on Netflix in September 2023 with a $1 million budget and reached No. 3 on the platform's global film chart. More than 20 million people watched it in its opening weeks. It entered the Top 10 in 69 countries. A Nollywood film. Nigerian story. Nigerian director. Nigerian lead.

Now the sequel is in production. It's called Old Scores. Nicky Weinstock, the Emmy-nominated producer behind Severance on Apple TV+, has joined as producer. The cast includes Richard Mofe-Damijo reprising his role alongside Shaffy Bello, Kate Henshaw, and Basketmouth. There's a 300-person international crew drawn from Nigeria, the UK, the US, China, and Japan. The collaboration is between Editi Effiong's Anakle Films and Weinstock's Invention Studios in Los Angeles.

This is what it looks like when something stops asking for permission.

The original Black Book didn't arrive with Hollywood backing. It arrived with a first-time director, a Nigerian cast, and a budget that would barely cover post-production on a mid-level American action film. It worked because the story was real. A deacon with a dark past. A corrupt police gang. A country where justice depends entirely on who you know and what you're willing to do. Nigerians watching in Peckham or Brampton or Lagos or Abuja recognised something.

That recognition is what Hollywood is now funding.

The diaspora relationship with Nollywood has always been complicated. For years, watching a Nigerian film abroad meant hunting down a DVD at a market stall, or streaming something with sound problems on a pirated site. Netflix changed the distribution. The Black Book proved the audience was always there. It just needed a screen it could access.

Old Scores is a sequel in the obvious sense. New story, same character. But it's also a sequel in a larger sense. A $1 million film that went global has now attracted the kind of production infrastructure that usually goes to established franchise territory. Nigerian storytelling is franchise territory now.

The release date hasn't been announced. But the production is underway with a crew that spans four countries. The Nigerian in London who watched Paul Edima the first time and felt something familiar is already waiting.

What Editi Effiong understood when he made the first film, that you don't need permission to tell a story the world wants to hear, is now being backed by the people who make Severance.