In keeping to its research publication schedule, the UK Film Council has published summary statistics for film production and box office returns over the last year, while the Cinema Exhibitors Association has also released annual admissions figures.
The UKFC press release can be found here, and though I won’t repeat the full detail the headline numbers are as follows (you can click to enlarge any of the charts below):
- 119 feature films with budgets over £500,000 began principal photography in the UK during 2010, down from 144 in 2009.
- There were fewer inward investments features in 2010 than the previous year (28 compared with 35), and the number of domestic features and co-productions also fell (to 72 and 19 respectively) (see Figure 1):
Figure 1: Number of UK feature film productions, 2003 to 2010
Source: UK Film Council
- The relative proportions of features comprising inward investment, domestic and co-productions have remained remarkably consistent over the last few years (as Figure 2 demonstrates), with domestic features constituting six out of every ten films made in the UK.
Figure 2: Number of UK feature film productions by type, as a percentage of the total
Source: UK Film Council
- These 119 productions had a combined UK spend of £1.155bn, up from £1.071bn in 2009.
- The growth was driven by another rise in inward investment activity, while the total spend on domestic features fell from £224.4m in 2009 to £174.1m in 2010 (see Figure 3).
- For the first time since 2006, the total spend on co-productions rose, albeit from a historic low of £35.9m in 2009 to £52.0m in 2010.
Figure 3: UK spend on UK feature films (£bn), 2003 to 2010
Source: UK Film Council
- The dominance of inward investment feature spend within the UK total is illustrated in Figure 4, and 2010 saw the highest proportion of spend attributable to this category since comparable records began in 2003.
Figure 4: UK spend on UK feature film productions by type, as a percentage of the total
Source: UK Film Council
On to box office numbers, which held their own in 2010, rising 2% to £1.076 billion for the UK and Republic of Ireland. British films’ market share stood at 22.6%, including 5.5% contributed by independent British films, up from 2009's market share of 16.7% (when indie films, including Slumdog Millionaire, contributed 8.2%, a fact not mentioned in the press release).
Among other details, the press release includes the fact that 28 3D titles were released in 2010, grossing £237.4 million (a 24% market share, up from 16% in 2009).
The premium charged for 3D tickets, and ticket inflation more generally, explains why box office rose in 2010, for in truth admissions were down (although we can only compare tickets sold in the UK, as opposed to the territory total for UK and Republic of Ireland used to measure box office gross). In 2010, there were 169,249,839 admissions to UK cinemas, down 2.5% on 2009 (Figure 5).
Figure 5: Annual UK cinema admissions, 2002 to 2010
Source: CAA/Rentrak EDI/CEA
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