UK exhibitors look ahead to 2026: “The end of this horror show”

Among the three main pillars of the film industry — production, distribution and exhibition — the latter sector, rooted in bricks and mortar, has traditionally shown a fair amount of stability. In the UK, the past couple of decades has seen the three big multiplex chains — Odeon, Cineworld and Vue — jostle for top-dog status. Meanwhile the steady growth of the three boutique chains — Everyman, Curzon and Picturehouse, the latter acquired by Cineworld in 2012 — has been a notable feature of the UK exhibition landscape. And then a middle tier of smaller companies, often locally based and family-­owned, has attracted relatively little media attention.

The past year, however, has seen activity and change across all sectors of UK exhibition, as shockwaves unleashed by the Covid pandemic continue to reverberate. The upheaval was felt most keenly by Cineworld, which interrogated its UK site portfolio after reconstituting the formerly bankrupt company on a new footing with fresh leadership in 2023.

The Light — which operates 13 plexes in the UK and is about to open a 14th, in Huddersfield, Yorkshire — was acquired last October by Luke Johnson and Risk Capital Partners alongside Melcorpo, with a stated aim to aggressively grow the company. Ireland’s Omniplex Cinema Group, which acquired Empire Cinemas out of administration in December 2023, made its first venture into the UK mainland.

Last November, Cohen Media Group’s Curzon was acquired by Fortress Investment Group after Fortress sued Cohen for defaulting on a loan. The same month saw Philip Knatchbull return to Curzon as executive chairman, and the departure of CEO Edward Fletcher. Knatchbull’s return followed hot on the heels of Picturehouse Cinemas founder Lyn Goleby rejoining as interim executive chair, eight years after she departed the chain.

“In the three or four years before the pandemic, there was an established and perhaps predictable — but nevertheless upward — trajectory,” comments Phil Clapp, CEO of the UK Cinema Association (UKCA) trade body. “This was centred on investing in experience and growing the footprint of cinemas. After the shock of the pandemic and some of the challenges around the strikes, the focus was on dealing with the here and now — managing what was a very challenging and often unpredictable situation.

“But what we have seen over the past year or so — new players emerging, new investments — seem to me positive developments and related to now being able to take a breath and look with confidence to the future, rather than having to deal with a whole set of circumstances which were for the most part outside of cinemas’ control.”

Rise in admissions

While the UK exhibition landscape saw dynamic activity and a degree of turmoil in 2024, the picture for box office was — frustratingly for all players — one of stasis. Total UK and Ireland box office for 2024 was reported by Comscore at £1.06bn ($1.36bn), essentially flat with 2023, and still 21% behind the £1.35bn ($1.73bn) achieved in pre-pandemic 2019. More encouragingly, UK cinema admissions were 2.3% up on 2023. Rising admissions and static box office may relate to more audiences for family films in 2024, but it is clear exhibitors are being value-­conscious when setting ticket prices.

A strong awards season at the UK and Ireland box office in January 2025, followed by the February arrival of Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy — a blockbuster event in its home territory — has seen box office for the first two months rise 12% on the same period of 2024.

At multiplex operator Vue Entertainment, founder and CEO Tim Richards is preparing for what he sees as a bright future. “Everyone has been suffering for the last five years, and we haven’t been exempt from that, so it’s been a very tough period,” he says. “What keeps me excited is knowing that it’s ending at the end of this year. Which is why we are so laser-focused on doing everything we can to prepare for it, refurbishing cinemas, buying cinemas, opening new cinemas, new concepts, and we’re just going as fast as we possibly can.”

One of those concepts has just been launched at its new Swindon cinema, where concession stands have been eliminated in favour of a walk-through food and beverage retail offer, Vue Your Way — with an expanded product range, and what Richards promises is “no queuing” and “very easy sweep, transaction time around 20 to 25 seconds”.

Projected top hits of 2025

Film title	Projected revenue
Avatar: Fire And Ash	£70m
Wicked: For Good	£60m
Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy	£50m
Zootropolis 2	£35m
Jurassic World: Rebirth	£35m
Lilo And Stitch	£30m
Michael	£30m
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning	£28m
Superman	£28m
F1	£25m
Fantastic Four: First Steps	£25m

Source: Digital Cinema Media

Richards forecasts a strong summer, a weaker autumn, and then the arrival of the cavalry in the back end of the year with Disney’s Avatar: Fire And Ash and Universal’s Wicked: For Good. “We are going to look at Avatar as being the end and the beginning,” he says. “It’s going to be the end of this horror show we’ve all been through for five years, and the beginning of an amazing new era of filmgoing based on everything that we can see for the next few years of releases… but not this year.”

Richards points to “15 or 20 films” on the 2026 slate — including titles in the Avengers, Minions, Batman, Spider-Man, Toy Story, Shrek and Dune franchises, plus Disney’s live-action Moana and Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey — with “breakout potential”. As he explains, “That’s the main difference between this year and next year. This year, there’s [only] a handful that have got breakout potential.”

Cinema investment

Vue is not the only chain preparing for a brighter future. Everyman reported 17.9% revenue growth in 2024 (up to £107.2m/$139m), and a market share rising to 5.4% (up from 4.8% in 2023). The leading boutique operator is opening two new cinemas this year — at Brentford and Bayswater, both in west London — with three more openings anticipated for 2026, which would take the venue total to 52.

At Picturehouse, which suffered from under-­investment coming out of Covid and during Cineworld’s period of debt burden and insolvency, the returned Goleby has focused on putting the house in order. “There’s a big refurbishment programme going on,” she says. “We’ve got a generous capex allocation and time to tidy up some of the estate. Interiors can get tired over the years. It’s amazing how often you have to keep refurbishing toilets.”

Goleby is addressing every aspect of the business. “We’re busy rebuilding our food and beverage business at the moment,” she reveals. “We’ve got a new commercial director who started last year, and I’m working closely with her on the whole food and beverage offer in a difficult food and beverage environment.”

Picturehouse closed three London cinemas in the summer of 2024 — Fulham Road, Stratford East and Bromley — and earlier that year pulled out of its site in Ashford, Kent, handing it over to the local council to operate. This was balanced by three openings — Ealing, Chester and Epsom — from October 2023 to June 2024.

Despite the closures, Picturehouse achieved a 6% rise in admissions from 2023 to 2024, and forecasts similar growth for 2025. The year has started strongly. “We’ve smashed it,” comments Picturehouse managing director Clare Binns. “We are way ahead of our budget and way ahead of last year [for the equivalent period].” Successes include top market share on Oscar winner A Real Pain, and some big numbers for event cinema. “National Theatre Live is fantastic for us,” says Binns. “That audience is back, and it’s a slightly different demographic — it’s a younger crowd coming in.”

At Curzon, Alex Sheldon — who is managing director, cinemas — is in similarly buoyant mood. “It’s been a fantastic quarter so far,” he says regarding Q1 2025. For January and February, admissions are 18% up year on year, and box office is 23% up. “This is the first time since the pandemic where we’re in line with 2019 numbers.”

Curzon’s most recent openings — Canterbury Riverside and Kingston — are its most mainstream-­programmed sites, alongside Oxford, and the variety helps Curzon better weather any peaks and troughs in the release calendar. “Summer used to be a very quiet period for us,” explains Sheldon. “Our new openings do skew a little bit broader, so it allows us to benefit from the summer programme, and it does flatten the curve a bit.”

Difficult recovery

Like the cinema business, landlords suffered during the pandemic — with some operators delinquent on rent or seeking to renegotiate commercial terms.

“It has been tough for landlords,” says Sheldon. “By the same token, it’s hard to find a long-term tenant that can hold a development together and be a hub. If you put in retail units and restaurants, it’s unusual for them to sign long leases. The cinema business has taken time to recover over the last five years, but it’s still a good option for developers and landlords [to] create an anchor tenant.”

As for the change of Curzon leader­ship, Sheldon says it is business as usual. “In terms of Ed leaving and Philip coming back — when Ed came on board, there was a secure management team here, and on the whole that management team has remained. We joke that it’s like that scene from Dallas where Bobby Ewing came out of the shower. It’s a very easy fit. We’ve all worked with each other for a very long time.”

In 2024, Cineworld closed six cinemas, and a further five in January 2025. Last July it announced it was seeking to renegotiate rental terms with landlords on another batch of venues — and there is chatter within the UK exhibition community that landlords are talking to other operators about them taking on some of these sites. Vue has already announced it will refurbish and reopen Cineworld’s Nottingham site, which closed in February and was not part of the previously announced closures.

While Cineworld is retrenching, a number of medium-sized companies are advancing — what the UKCA’s Clapp characterises as “the growth of a vibrant middle tier”. A notable example is the Dublin-headquartered Omniplex Cinema Group which now operates seven cinemas — all former Empires — in England and Scotland, and is headed by CEO Paul John Anderson.

Omniplex is a family business, as is the Loughborough-headquartered Reel Cinemas, where Sunil Suri has served as director since December 2022, taking over from his father Kailash Suri who founded the company in 2001 (Suri Sr died in March 2024). Reel expanded from 15 to 16 cinemas in 2024 with the opening of a six-screen site in Farnham, and is developing two sites in north-east England: Bishop Auckland and Ashington. Reel offers an affordable proposition in towns and small cities, including Blackburn, Rochdale and Hull.

PDJ Cinemas has seen a similar passing of the torch from Paul Jervis to his son James Jervis, who joined as director in June 2023. PDJ opened new cinemas (both former Empires) in Sutton Coldfield and London’s Walthamstow last summer, refurbished its King’s Lynn and Lytham St Annes venues, is adding two new screens to its Worthing cinema, and will open its sixth site in Wolverhampton this year.

“The mid-tier operators like us, I think we share a DNA and that independent family-owned ethos,” explains Reel’s Suri. “We take a long-term view of the market, and that has a lot of power right now, when subject to the whims of cost of money elsewhere. We’re in it for the long term, and that’s our advantage.

“There’s a personality element as well, there’s a new generation of operators coming in,” he adds. “James at PDJ, Paul at Omniplex, these are people who had the good fortune of being in the family business, and that gives a new energy to the business.”

The major circuits, Suri suggests, “They’re scaled and geared differently, and that means their ability to innovate and respond to a change in conditions is going to be different. If you look at the mid-tier operators like ourselves, we’re very low-geared and fleet of foot, and that gives you a lot of space to play — the space to innovate and respond to changing consumer demands and wants.”

Reel, which is part of a diversified group including property, has the advantage of owning many of its own sites, and can also see the landlord-­tenant relationship from both sides — its sister company is landlord to cinemas operated by Odeon, Vue and Everyman.

“We try to rent at the right price,” says Suri. “And because we’re landlords, we have a sense of what good looks like.”

Last October, UK chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the incoming Labour government’s first Budget — which included changes to employers’ National Insurance liabilities. The rise from 13.8% to 15% is not seen as particularly significant, but the lowering of the annual salary threshold from £9,100 ($11,700) to £5,000 ($6,400) drags many casual employees into the net. From April 6, employers must now make National Insurance contributions for those workers.

“It is unfortunate timing,” comments Vue’s Richards. “Anyone who has a large number of employees — as we do, as the retail sector does, as the leisure sector does — it hurts. It’s a classic example of hurting the people you’re trying to help. Because, with the additional costs, that makes it harder and more expensive to hire people that you want to hire.”

Omniplex, which has a total of 700 employees in the UK (including in Northern Ireland) calculates a big impact. “The reduction of the bands really shocked us,” says Anderson. “We’re estimating we’re going to have a three- to four-fold increase on our employer National Insurance contributions. Around 80% of our employees are hourly staff.”

Managing costs

However, the time is evidently not right to push upwards on ticket prices. “It’s difficult now to pass on those costs to customers,” says Anderson, and his comments are echoed by Richards and Picturehouse’s Goleby.

Goleby sees the negative impact in broader terms. “Is the cost-of-living crisis behind us? I absolutely don’t think it is behind us,” she says. “I think National Insurance tax increases are going to lead to price rises and fewer jobs. And the Employment Rights Bill is just around the corner as well, and that’s going to have a massive cost associated with it for employers. So in macroeconomic terms, I’m quite pessimistic.

“But I’ve also seen cinema weather so much across the last 35 years I’ve been involved in it,” she continues. “I have a deep belief that cinema will weather it more than many businesses, and come through it fighting fit.”

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