There are greenshoots of recovery sprouting in the UK exhibitor sector, said distributors and exhibitors on the first day of the annual UK Cinema Association (UKCA) conference on March 5.
This is despite a light-looking release schedule thus far in 2024.
The 400-strong attendance included representatives ranging from nationwide chains such as Everyman, Picturehouse, Vue, Cineworld and Odeon, to independents such as the Strand Arts Centre in Belfast and the Exeter Phoenix, as well as distributors including Disney, Altitude, We Are Parable and Warner Bros, plus TikTok.
They gathered at London’s BFI Southbank Centre for the two-day conference, spearheaded by Phil Clapp, the UKCA chief executive, or “the gaffer” as he was affectionately referred to by the Watershed’s Mark Cosgrove.
The conference has been running since 2010, but Clapp confirmed this year is the largest edition they have run to-date.
Comsore’s client insights manager Nena Loncar kicked off proceedings with a positive message from the UK-Ireland’s box office across the first eight weeks of 2024. The UK is up 1% on last year’s equivalent period, and up 4% on 2022. The US, comparatively, is down 21%, while France is down 19%, and Germany down 22%.
While the UK-Ireland remains steady, Italy is way ahead, up 22% for the first eight weeks of 2024, year-on-year. This is owing to a higher number of titles performing well, as opposed to just the blockbusters.
Loncar believes the UK-Ireland 2024 box office is, so far, demonstrating a “much healthier, more diverse marketplace” than in recent years, with the likes of less conventionally mainstream awards titles including Poor Things (£7.1m) sitting in the top 10 highest grossers at the box office of 2024 to-date. The number of releases passing the £1m milestone across January and February in 2024 is up 35% on 2022 and 29% on 2023.
“Things are looking up,” she noted.
Dune Part Two has enjoyed the biggest opening weekend of the year so far, taking £9.3m in the territory, which is around double the opening weekend of the first film, in October 2021.
However, overall, the estimated total box office for 2024 sits at £1bn, while 2023 took £1.06bn in total. It is early days, however, as more titles get added to the UK-Ireland release slate throughout the year. Some 428 titles are scheduled for release, whereas 2023 saw 1,014 films out in the territory.
Dev Patel’s directorial debut Monkey Man, an action thriller in which he also stars and is a producer, alongside Jordan Peele, has been a key recent addition to the release slate. It was reportedly originally set up at Netflix, however Jordan Peele and Universal boarded to give it a full theatrical release.
Returning cinemagoers
The proportion of 2019 cinemagoers who are returning to cinemas is also etching up, according to Vue’s head of customer experience and insight Ruth Hinton, presenting research on behalf of Cinema First.
In November 2022, the proportion of 2019 cinema attendees who had returned was 58%. This went up to 63% in January 2023, and 82% in November 2023.
Key groups that need engagement are teens and young adults – who are participating in cinema-going, but less frequently than pre-pandemic. Younger families also need to be targeted, and older families and older adults are not participating as much, and less frequently, than pre-pandemic. The biggest gaps in frequency of attendance are in the youngest and oldest demographics.
The proportion of cinema-goers cutting back spending on outings is also looking promising. In November 2022, 30% said they were cutting back, which went up to 35% in 2023, but down to 28% in November 2023.
An area for improvement is education around what films are coming out. The proportion of cinemagoers who had no idea what films were coming out in November 2022 was 19%, compared to 20% in January 2023 and 31% in November 2023.
Repertory and event cinema get boosts
The appetite for repertory and event cinema releases appears to be growing.
For repertory specialist distributor Park Circus, Titanic proved its biggest success of 2023, taking £2.5m.
London’s Prince Charles Cinema’s head of programming Paul Vickery said the cinema has just had its “strongest 12 months in history”, while the Watershed reported 10% of its audiences over the last financial year has been for repertory cinema – and it’s not just older audiences looking for a trip down memory lane; 22% of Bristol’s Watershed repertory audience is from the age 24 and under bracket.
2023’s box office takings for event cinema finished around £37.8m, not quite matching the record-breaking year of 2019, which hit £53m. However, at 3.6%, 2023 was a record year for market share for event cinema in UK-Ireland. Successful releases included Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour for Trafalgar Releasing (£12m); Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition (£1.3m) for Seventh Art Distribution and Good (£1.2m) for NT Live.
How audiences are engaging with event cinema continues to evolve – NT Live’s Caroline Maddison said the focus is shifting from the live night-of release, with encores increasing in popularity. Dear England, for example, took double its opening night takings across its encore season.
Trafalgar Releasing’s Marc Allenby has seen a change in buying patterns. Event cinema has historically had longer box office lead times than traditional feature releases, however audiences he feels are increasingly buying closer to date of release, and not booking up so far in advance.
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