Spain is the first of two more territories for which box office data are now available for the first half of 2009. John Hopewell, writing in Variety, reports numbers released by the Federation of Spanish Cinemas (FECE) that show Spanish box office gross rose 13% in the first six months of 2009 over the same period in 2008, the first such rise in five years. Takings totalled Euros 296 million ($414.4 million), and cinema admissions were also up by 8%, to 48.8 million.
These are certainly encouraging figures, but as nothing compared to the growth seen in China since the start of the year. Box office there grew by 43%, to stand at $330.16 million (RMB 2.26 billion), according to figures published by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT). ScreenDaily.com’s coverage reports that local cinema managers and analysts predict the year-end total ‘should be between $732 million and $805 million (RMB5-5.5 billion).’
Now for news closer to home. Earlier this month the British Video Association (BVA) released home entertainment figures based on data from the Official Charts Company, which reveal that over 3 million Blu-ray Discs have sold in the first half of 2009, a rise of 231% on the same period last year.
The BVA’s press release quotes Hannah Conduct, BVA Marketing Manager, as saying:
The BVA points to evidence that the shift to Blu-ray may be displacing DVD sales, which recorded a fall of 9.5% year-on-year (I assume this is the decline in unit sales numbers rather than sales value).
Other, less positive, factors are also felt to have played a role. Lavinia Carey, BVA Director General, is quoted as saying:
Turning from home entertainment to exhibition, the good folks at Dodona Research have recently launched a report into digital cinema roll out across the globe, and Digitalcinemainfo.com offers the following taster:
The full report, Digital Cinema Briefing, is available to purchase direct from Dodona.
And finally, a piece by Vanessa Thorpe caught my attention in yesterday’s Observer. Headlined ‘Why the British film revival is in danger of being killed off’, the article rakes over the smoldering embers of the debate about the state of the British film industry, which usually flares up around Oscar-time, Cannes or whenever somebody in officialdom casts their eye over public policy for film.
Thus, taking her cue from the ongoing Lords Communications Committee enquiry into British film and TV, Thorpe runs through various bits of contradictory evidence of awards and box office success on the one hand, and a local production sector that some claim is in ‘terminal decline’.
Perhaps unsurprisingly the piece is short on any definitive remedies, but this is in part due to the lack of a clear diagnosis of the problem. If nothing else, the article confirms that if you ask half a dozen industry luminaries what they make of the current situation you’re likely to get as many different answers in reply. Tim Bevan, co-founder of Working Title and soon-to-be ensconced as Chair of the UK Film Council, identified piracy as the key threat in his evidence to the Lords committee, whereas producer Andrew Eaton (formerly Deputy Chair of the UK Film Council), sees this as "a bit of a smokescreen".
Instead, he and screenwriter Jonathan Gems seem to share the view that we “are in thrall to the American industry”, and this is the seat of the problem. What’s needed, according to Eaton, is a “discussion about how you make the economy of the British film industry work.”
Gems goes further, offering the view that while we have plenty of talent in this country,
His solution? Convince the European Commission to pass legislation imposing a quota on the proportion of films shown in European cinemas that are made in Europe (50% is the figure quoted). "Then we would get our own industry pretty quickly," Gems says- although quite how this will deliver a more robust British industry remains unclear.
The debate, as framed in this way, is hamstrung both by the lack of a coherent vision of what’s happening on the ground (and it is a complicated picture- there is no single, homogeneous industry), and consensus about what the key issues are. How do you measure the strength and vitality of the film industry (especially given its heterogeneity)? Which indicators might we turn to, and how should we interpret them?
Big questions, indeed. We’ll have to wait until later this year to see whether the Lords Communications Committee can shed any light on the matter. In the meantime we can at least look forward to publication of the Q2 UK production statistics by the UK Film Council’s Research & Statistics Unit (due to appear this Thursday).
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