“Cinema is back” — the unofficial motto of this year’s
Cannes Film Festival — appears to be coming true, at least in Europe, where
box office is resurgent, raising hopes for a rebound in the pandemic-battered theatrical business.
France just had its best weekend returns since the start of COVID, with 3.5 million tickets sold from Wednesday June 30 through Sunday, July 4. The result — double the previous weekend and on par with equivalent figures from 2019 — was helped by France’s La Fete du Cinéma promotional event, which sees theaters nationwide offer discounted tickets to kick off the summer season.
Spain also saw it biggest box office weekend since the start of COVID, with 612 000 admissions and a $5 million (€4.15 million) take, driven by the local release of F9, which took a 65 percent share of the market.
F9 helped the British box office roared back to life last weekend and continued to rev business, with three-day Friday to Sunday returns in the U.K. and Ireland hitting $3.7 million for two-week total of $15 million.
“Those are pre-pandemic numbers, and they could only be achieved if many cinemas are being at capacity, or at the capacity they are allowed at the moment,” says Phil Clapp, CEO of the U.K. Cinema Association. “So I’ve got no doubt that money is been left on the table, that if cinemas had been able to accommodate more guests, we would have generated more box office than even these very high numbers.”
Germany saw 830,000 tickets sold for the July 1-4 timeframe as theaters reopened for the first time since November. The top five films — Godzilla vs Kong, Peter Rabbit 2, The Conjuring 3 and local comedy Catweazle — each sold more than 100,000 tickets, impressive given social distancing requirements which limited capacity to 25 percent for most cinemas.
“With those restrictions in place, we didn’t expect an opening weekend with four films hitting six-digit admission figures,” says Johannes Klingsporn, managing director of German distributors association VdF. “It’s a great start to the 2021 cinema year, and in the next few months we’ll be offering up an absolute firework of great films.”
That firework will include Disney’s Black Widow, which bows across most the world, including all of Europe, July 7-9, and F9, which Universal is given a more staggered roll out, bowing July 14 in France (after its French premiere in Cannes), in Germany July 15 and Aug. 18 in Italy.
With its bounceback, the French box office is substantially stronger than at this time last year, with a million more admissions than between June 24 and June 28, 2020 — the initial “reopening weekend” after France’s first COVID-19 lockdown.
“Everyone’s very, very happy with what we’ve seen in France, those images of people queuing up at eight in the morning to watch movie,” notes Laura Houlgatte Abbott, CEO of European cinemas group UNIC. “But we’ve also seen strong numbers from Denmark, the Netherlands, from Estonia, Poland and Spain. All in all, its been a real feel-good story.”
The Cannes festival, with its wall-to-wall coverage in the French media, is certain to further supercharge the local box office. “It’s going to be tremendous,” says Eric Marti, general manager of Comscore France, which compiles
international box office data.
The news out of France has been particularly encouraging for the independent distributors. While studio fare — Disney’s Cruella, Paramount’s A Quiet Place 2, Warner Bros.’ The Conjuring 3 — has done well, so has French comedy (Bye Bye Morons, Un tour chez ma fille), and more arthouse fare, including Oscar winners Nomadland, The Father and Another Round.
“What’s surprised, even shocked me, was the diversity of the films that did well,” says Marti. “All the audience has come back: older, younger, every demographic.”
As European cinemas re-open, distributors are faced with a new challenge: finding slots amid a suddenly-packed release slate.
“There are landmines everywhere, its become extremely complicated,” says Jeffery Greenstein, president of Millennium Films, whose action comedy The Hitman’s Bodyguard’s Wife is rolling out worldwide. “For any one film, every distributor in every territory has their own strategy for when and how to bring the movie out.”
While the European market is showing signs of green shoots, the global box office picture is more complicated. China remains strong but dominated by local fare. Propaganda film 1921 took in $21.4 million over the weekend, nearly half of the territory’s total $44.9 million take. In South Korea, local crime thriller Hard Hit was the number one film this past weekend, with a $2.07 million opening, from a $6.63 million total, but Korean audiences have also embraced studio blockbusters. F9 has been the biggest film in the territory so far year, earning $19.4 million to date.
While China’s 2021 running box office total is $4.3 billion, down just 11.8 percent from 2019’s $4.88 billion total over the same period, Korean results so far — at $174.4 million for the first half of this year — are sharply off the pre-pandemic pace from 2019, when the full-year total was $1.61 billion.
Much of the rest of Asia is shut down, including India, Malaysia, and Taiwan, where all cinemas are shut; Thailand, where a significant portion remain closed amid stubbornly high COVID-19 case counts and a slow vaccination rollout; Vietnam (partial shutdown) and Indonesia, where all cinemas on Java, home to Jakarta and other major populations centers, are currently closed.
All eyes are now on Disney’s Black Widow and on whether the studio’s day-and-date release —the Marvel tentpole will have a PVOD release on Disney+ alongside its theatrical bow — will impact its theatrical take.
“We are seeing a renewed look at the length of the [theatrical] window and the sense that a period of theatrical exclusivity does drive value,” says Clapp. “It think what we will probably see in the U.K. and the other other territories is a shorter window than the one we saw pre-COVID but equally a clear and distinct sense that having a period of exclusivity within cinemas and on other platforms makes the most sense for a significant number of films, and particularly the larger films.”
Few expect European box office to quickly return to pre-COVID levels but as the Cannes Festival kicks off, admission figures are giving the industry hope that cinema is truly back for good.
“There are still capacity limitation in place in many territories, so mathematical effects will make it difficult for theaters to reach figures seen before the pandemic,” admits Abbott of UNIC. “But we are confident because we have the content – the right mix of Hollywood and local content, and we have the audience, like in France, that can’t wait to go back to cinemas. That, to be honest, can’t wait to get of the house again. We’re confident we are going to have a great summer.”
Patrick Brzeski contributed to this report.
