If you build it, they will come. The glut of successful blockbusters released in cinemas in the first half of the year has resulted in a sharp increase in the numbers of British filmgoers, compared with last year.
The British Film Institute said there were 83.1m admissions to British cinemas between January and June 2015, an increase of 10% on the 75.5m visits in the same period in 2014.
The increase was driven by a series of high-earning Hollywood films, led by Jurassic World, which took more than £57m in UK cinemas by the start of July. It was followed by superhero sequel Avengers: Age of Ultron (£48.3m), action thriller Fast and Furious 7 (£38.5m) and Fifty Shades of Grey (£35.1m). All these films earned more than the top-grossing film in the corresponding period in 2014 – The Lego Movie, which managed £34.1m.
Market share for British productions and co-productions has also risen, from 19.1% in the first half of 2014 to 32% this year. However, the technicalities of certifying films as British or part-British mean that films such as Avengers: Age of Ultron and the live-action Disney adaptation Cinderella are included. The highest-performing “British” film so far this year (but which had substantial Hollywood backing) is the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything, which took £21.5m, while the leading wholly-British production, Shaun the Sheep the Movie, made £13.7m.
Shaun the Sheep the Movie also counts as the leading British independent film, and this sector is looking healthier than last year. The top 10 UK independents grossed a total of £42m in the first half of 2015, with titles such as Thomas Hardy adaptation Far from the Madding Crowd (£6.1m), period-horror sequel The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death (£5m) and TV spinoff Spooks: The Greater Good (£3.2m) following Shaun’s lead. In the same period last year the top 10 indies grossed £33.6m, so this year’s total is an improvement of £8.4m, or 25%.
Lucy Jones, executive director of box-office tracking agency Rentrak, says that the surge was not a surprise. “At the start of the year, we predicted 2015 would be a very good year, with a lot of high-profile films. Last year, by this time, only five films had made over £20m, but this year, we have had eight.”
Jones also says 2014 was an “unusual” year in box-office terms, the second in two years of consecutive drops, with a decline of 2.9%. Part of the reason for disappointing returns was the delay of two key films: Fast & Furious 7, after the death of its star Paul Walker, and the Pixar animation The Good Dinosaur, which was beset by script problems. Both had been due to open in 2014, but were pushed into this year. If their figures had been included in last year’s total, the contrast would have been less dramatic. In the event, Fast & Furious 7’s total has bumped up 2015’s first half, while The Good Dinosaur will follow Pixar stablemate Inside Out in November. “To have two Pixar films in one year, with the huge amount of work that goes into them, is unheard of,” said Jones.
Jones says she doesn’t foresee the 2015 bonanza slowing down, with Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur, Spectre, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 and Star Wars: The Force Awakens to come later in the year. “It’s one of those years when there are a lot of large-scale, almost review-proof films.”
Will next year, 2016, suffer as a result? “We don’t think it’ll go back to 2014’s level, even though there will be few of those big franchises around: no Hunger Games, or Bond – though there will be a Star Wars standalone: 2016 will be a big challenge.”
