Film Distributors’ Association (FDA) chief executive Andy Leyshon struck an upbeat note about prospects for the UK cinema sector at the annual launch of the FDA Yearbook on Thursday (March 31).
“The fact that we’ve all come through the last two years in one piece and with a vision for recovery is most heartening. Now that we’re coming out the other side, we can get back to focusing on the job in hand as stronger people and organisations,” Leyshon told Screen.
“As a sector we’ve been able to demonstrate great resilience, and have subsequently been rewarded by returning audiences who have missed the big-screen experience and the social pleasure of watching movies together.”
The annual report – which is in its 20th annual edition – includes statistics about the UK cinema market, with data (from ComScore and other sources) suggesting that the sector is bouncing back after two Covid-affected years.
While the UK box office showed a strong upturn in 2021, however, the yearbook also noted challenges including rising inflation which could hinder the recovery.
Figures show that UK cinema admissions rebounded in 2021 to 74 million, after collapsing to a historic low of 43.9 million in 2020 when cinemas were forced to close due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Last year’s figure remains significantly below the pre-pandemic figure of 176 million in 2019.
However, the yearbook revealed “a strong and significant increase in the number of people that returned to the cinemas once they reopened in summer 2021”. Certain trends were apparent. Younger age groups (13 to 24-year-olds) alongside parents were the most likely to have returned to cinemas.
With inflation and cost of living rising, one key finding was that “financial concerns were the primary barrier for those yet to return to cinema”. The average ticket price rose to £7.47 in 2021, a sizeable increase from £6.75 in 2020.
“We need to consider the current financial squeeze and whether that has any effect on our members and cinemagoing in general,” Leyshon acknowledged. “I would always err on the side of optimism though and think that in such times, film and cinema can provide a rare space of escape and entertainment, that is needed now more than ever.”
Lopsided recovery
A total of 497 titles were released in the UK and Ireland in 2021, up from 444 in 2020 but still close to half the 896 titles released pre-pandemic in 2019.
The UK remains a very lopsided market with just a handful of titles accounting for the majority of revenues. The top 20 films’ box office took £542m, representing 91% of the overall haul of £597m.
Of the overall total, 28% came from two films: Universal’s No Time To Die (£96.5m) and Sony’s Spider-Man: No Way Home (£74.8m). Leyshon hailed these strong performances in spite of a period of closures, restrictive measures and ever-changing health concerns as “a quite remarkable market reinvigoration”. (Factoring in No Way Home’s 2022 box office which raised its total to £96.3m, both films now count among the top five all-time territory hits.)
Of other films released by UK distributors in 2021, some 441 grossed less than £1m while only 17 titles (3% of the total) had receipts of more than £10m.
London remained the epicentre of filmgoing in the UK with box office in the UK’s capital reaching £150.5m, or a quarter of the overall total in the UK and Ireland.
Box office for foreign-language titles fell 66% in 2021 to £5.8m, from 88 new releases, after the sector grew in 2020 thanks to the success of South Korean Oscar-winner Parasite. Japanese manga feature Demon Slayer: Mugen Train was the only foreign-language title to break the £1m mark at the UK box office in 2021, taking £1.2m.
For his part, Leyshon remains sanguine about the cinema prospects for these titles. “Foreign-language and arthouse films now have greater exposure than ever before, though this isn’t always in a cinematic environment. Perhaps the greater presence of such titles across multiple formats can help to build a new, younger fanbase from the bottom up,” he said.
“If the right films come along, there will always be an audience for them,” he continued. “You only have to look at the phenomenal Parasite result in recent times to see that anything is possible.”
At Thursday’s launch, Leyshon also hailed the newfound camaraderie among different sectors of the industry that emerged during the pandemic.
“I would say the biggest upside was the feeling and position of sector unity that emerged,” he said. “Over the years, distribution and exhibition have at times been odd bedfellows, yet the pandemic reminded us all that both sides of the house rely on each other and we all operate in a much wider film ecosystem.”
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