The Cinema Advertising Association has just released the final UK admissions tally for 2008, courtesy of Nielsen EDI, and it makes for heartening reading (see the Pearl and Dean web site for full details).
Despite a mediocre December (with 12,302,513 admissions, the lowest for the month since 2000), ticket sales for the year rose by 1.1% in 2008, totalling 164,222,085, compared with 162,427,017 in 2007.
This leaves it just shy of the 2005 total (164,691,779), but well above the recent low point of 2006 (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: UK admissions, 2002 to 2008
Not bad considering what’s happening in other sectors of the economy, and a better picture than we’ve seen in the US. I’ve not come across a year-end box office total for the UK yet, but with ticket price inflation to factor in, 2008 will no doubt be seen as a good year, all things considered.
The CAA has also released a table of the top ten box office performers in 2008, confirming Mamma Mia’s crowning achievement, along with a strong showing for Bond and Batman (proving it’s been quite a year for brooding men with fancy cars).
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