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The market share for UK indie films saw an 82% increase at the UK-Ireland box office in 2024, compared to 2023, according to the British Film Institute (BFI).
The market share for UK independent films increased to 6.9% in 2024, from 3.8% the previous year.
The total UK-Ireland box office for the 2024 top 20 UK independent films was £63.9m, almost double 2023’s top 20 total of £33.7m.
Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Back To Black, produced by Monumental Pictures and Studiocanal and distributed in the UK and Ireland by Studiocanal, is the top grossing UK independent film, grossing £12.3m.
This was followed by Warner Bros’ One Life (£10m), Studiocanal’s Wicked Little Letters (£9.6m), Black Bear’s Conclave (£5.8m to date) and Disney’s All Of Us Strangers (£5.3m).
These five releases of UK films grossed more than £5m in 2024. Only one title in 2023 grossed more than £5m – Warner Bros/Pathe’s The Great Escaper. Ten crossed this threshold in 2019.
Within the independent top 20, 16 films were collaborations with other countries and four were UK-only titles, compared with eight UK-only in 2023 and 11 in 2019.
The BFI defines an independent film as produced without creative or financial input from the major US studio companies of Fox Entertainment Group, NBC Universal, Paramount Motion Pictures Group, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group and Warner Bros Entertainment.
The BFI confirmed there is flexibility with productions that come from studio subsidaries, taking into account the film’s budget level, the filmmaker and the independent production companies who have propelled the projects.
The overall 2024 box office for films on release in the UK totalled £979m, broadly in line with 2023’s £980m, but 22% behind 2019. This 2024 box office figure, which includes event cinema, is 22% less than £1.3bn in 2019.
Box office across the UK and Ireland for 997 films released, excluding event cinema, in 2024 totalled £1.01bn, up from £994m in 2023.
These figures do not include 26 Netflix-backed titles which had a theatrical release as their box office revenues are not reported by the US streamer.
Universal’s Wicked was the highest-grossing release in the UK-Ireland in 2024 with a gross of £59.6 million. It accounted for 6% of the UK-Ireland’s total annual box office. This was followed by Disney’s Inside Out 2 with £59.5m.
Admissions
UK cinema admissions reached 126.5 million in 2024, a 2% increase on 2023 but 28% lower than 2019.
Admissions were lower in the first half of the year owing to a lack of major US studio releases as a result of the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023.
Box office revenue per admission was £7.74 in 2024, down from £7.92 in 2023, partly owing to the performance of family-targeted releases like Wicked, Disney’s Moana 2 and Studiocanal’s Paddington In Peru. Child or family tickets are typically sold at a lower price than standard tickets.
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