UK cinemas are coming together to celebrate and boost cinema attendance with a special event under the banner of ‘National Cinema Day’, taking place on Saturday, September 3.
The one-day event will see over 560 participating venues – about two thirds of UK cinemas – from all four regions offer reduced price tickets for all screenings, costing just £3.
It is being organised by the cross-industry body Cinema First, which was founded in 2001, the core constituents of which are the Film Distributors’ Association and the UK Cinema Association. Participants in National Cinema Day include major UK cinema operators such as Odeon, Vue, Cineworld, Showcase, Empire and Picturehouse, and smaller operators and venues.
“It’s the result of a discussion we’ve been having for a number of months. We wanted to mark the recovery of the sector after what’s been an undoubtedly challenging couple of years,” Phil Clapp, chief executive of the UK Cinema Association, a body that represents the interests of over 90 percent of UK cinema operators, told Screen. “We looked at what happens in a number of other European territories, like France and Spain, who have days of celebration [for cinemas], and in the UK we’ve not done it this century.”
Running in both 1996 and 1997, the previous incarnation of National Cinema Day saw audiences able to see any film at any cinema for just £1, organised to celebrate the first 100 years of commercial cinema in the UK. Clapp is keen for the reincarnated National Cinema Day to be an annual event, taking place around September, when cinema admissions typically encounter a post-summer slump.
“National Cinema Day is also a recognition that, even though the recovery has been a strong one, we may need to add some additional impetus to get a broader range of people back to the cinema,” continued Clapp. “We’re very ambitious and confident that we can push a large number of people back into cinemas.”
Back on track?
While both box office and admissions are now tracking at 80% of the levels seen in 2018 and 2019, themselves the biggest years for cinema-going since 1970, Clapp acknowledges that not all aspects of exhibition have seen such bounceback, following the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and changing viewing habits amid the rise of streaming options on offer for viewers.
“We can spot Bond [No Time To Die], Spider-Man: No Way Home, Top Gun: Maverick as the high points of the recovery,” said Clapp. “We have two issues – the films that were circling above cinemas during the pandemic have now landed, and the films that were being produced during that period have been delayed due to challenges around things such as post-production. Those films will begin to land around in late October and November onwards, and past that point, we’re confident the recovery will continue to accelerate.
“Broader diversity of films arriving in cinemas is not yet back to where it was, and I don’t think anyone’s under any illusions about the challenges that the independent film sector currently faces in terms of cost, production and marketing. There’s a willingness on the part of cinema operators of all shapes and sizes to give more of a profile to those films, and to give more support to those films when they arrive.”
The UK cinema sector is also grappling with the announcement that Cineworld Group, which owns the Cineworld and Picturehouse chains in the UK, is expected to file for bankruptcy.
“It’s been a frustration expressed to me by a number of our members, large and small, that the challenges being faced by one cinema company have been extrapolated by some commentators as a narrative around the entire sector being challenged, adding two and two and making five,” said Clapp. “When the mainstream media, BBC News for example, dips into this, they do it in a way that is often not sufficiently informed, and often relies on anecdote.”
Clapp concluded: ”It is the determination of the broad diversity of cinema operators that our association represents to keep focused on the long term, and for them, the long-term future is a positive one.”
No comments yet