France’s box office is bounding back steadily with a nearly 40% jump in February year-on-year ticket sales, driven by Disney’s Avatar: The Way Of Water, Pathe’s Asterix And Obelix: The Middle Kingdom and Studiocanal’s Alibi.com 2. But admissions are still below the pre-pandemic 2017-19 average according to figures released by the CNC.
Even as James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way Of Water broke records and the local-language blockbusters started strong, February’s ticket sales of 18.2m remain 21.3% below the 2017-2019 average.
Guillaume Canet’s high-budget live-action Asterix And Obelix: The Middle Kingdom was the top film in February with 4.2m admissions since its February 1 release, followed by Philippe Lacheau’s comedy Alibi.com 2 with 2.8m, which was released a week later. The two films are neck and neck at the top of the box office with Alibi.com 2 selling more tickets (798,133) than Asterix and Obelisk: The Middle Kingdom (514,000) the week of February 22-28.
Fifty-nine films were released in February 2023, on a par with 54 in February 2022, including a strong showing of 32 French titles and six US titles.
Avatar: The Way of Water breaks records
February was a good month for Disney whose Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania took the third spot for the month, selling 1.2m tickets after just two weeks in theatres, just ahead of Avatar: The Way Of Water that posted a further 1.1m admissions, bringing it to a total of 13.8m since its December 2022 release.
Avatar: The Way Of Water is now the biggest film of all time at the French box office, followed by The Intouchables from 2011 and the original Avatar from 2009. France is the top market for the film behind North America and China.
Warner Bros’ English-language Spanish computer-animated comedy Mummies followed not so closely with 589,000 admissions, just ahead of Paramount’s Babylon still going strong with an additional 583,000 admissions for a total of 1.4m admissions since its mid-January release in France.
Post-pandemic recovery
Since January 1, 2023, French theatres have locked in 33.3m admissions, a 40.5% jump from 2022 and 18.6% less than the 2017-2019 average. The boost in ticket sales is not surprising given in February 2022, pandemic restrictions were still in place in France including mandatory mask wearing inside movie theatres, the first full month with the country’s vaccine pass in effect and concessions returned only mid-month. Some 13m tickets were sold in February 2022, the lowest amount since 1997.
February 2023 is well below 2019’s 22 million admissions, 2018’s 22.5 million and 2017’s 24.9 million. Cinemas in France were completely shut down until May 2021.
However, the upwards momentum is encouraging for local distributors and March is off to a promising start with titles including Creed III (Warner Bros.) released on Wednesday (March 1) and French film Sweet Little Things (Zinc), plus an upcoming eclectic release schedule ranging from auteur films like François Ozon’s The Crime Is Mine (Gaumont) to US fare Scream 6 (Paramount), John Wick 4 (Metropolitan) and Shazam: Rage Of The Gods (Warner Bros.).
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