Bigger Picture Research

Guest post: Russian film distribution market

In late 2009 I flagged up a report on the Russian film industry authored by Nevafilm Research and Rfilms on behalf of the European Audiovisual Observatory.

Nevafilm has recently launched a new, and more detailed, study of the Russian distribution market, available to purchase from their web site (in the interest of full disclousure: I'm not working on commission).

Here Xenia Leontyeva, Senior Analyst at Nevafilm Research, explains what the report covers and how it can benefit industry professionals with an eye on the Russian market:

In a recent blog post, Jim Barratt asked what market players need to know about the film distribution market in the UK. Specialists at Nevafilm Research asked themselves the same question about the film distribution market in Russia last year.

We wondered: do many producers (in Russia and abroad) know what it takes to effectively sell their film on the Russian market? What fundamental knowledge will help them navigate Russia’s vast expanse? Let’s not forget that Russia, with a population of 141 million, boasts a truly massive market, spanning nine time zones and one-third of Eurasia.

UK feature film production, box office and admissions in 2010

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):

European box office, cinema admissions and feature production, 2009

With Cannes almost upon us, the European Audiovisual Observatory has released its annual round up of European box office, admissions, market share and feature production numbers, in advance of next week's publication of FOCUS 2010: World Film Market Trends.

The numbers, some of which are based on provisional data, paint an encouraging picture of cinema going and film making in apparent rude health (certainly at an aggregate level).

Headline data as follows:

• Total EU box office gross reached a record high of EUR 6.27 billion in 2009, a rise of 12% over 2008.
• Admissions rose by 6% to an estimated 981.1 million in 2009, up from 925.3 million in 2008.
• Annual box office gross increased in 21 of the 23 EU member states for which data are available, with only Ireland and Latvia seeing a decline. Admissions increased in 20 EU markets, and deceased in only six (see Table 1).
• European films had a market share of 26.7% of total EU admissions, down from 28.2% in 2008 and the lowest level since 2005.
• Market shares for national films declined in 18 out of 23 member states for which data were available in 2009.
• French films remained the most successful films in the EU market in terms of admissions. German films ranked second, taking 4.1% of the total, followed by UK productions accounting for 3.9% of total EU admissions.
• The Observatory estimates 1,168 feature films, including feature documentaries which accounted for 20% of the total, were produced in the EU in 2009, 28 more than in 2008 (the previous record year).
• The Observatory cautions that ‘differences in production measurement methodology between European countries make it difficult to evaluate the effects or non-effects of the economic crisis on overall production output in 2008 and 2009.’ ‘Nevertheless’, the press release continues, ‘the high in 2009 production data suggests that the European public funding system has prevented production levels from dropping significantly.’
• For the first time in recent years, Germany had Europe's highest production output (194 feature films), followed by France (182 features).

Click to enlarge:

You can find additional data and tables on the Observatory’s web site (including details of the top 20 performing titles at the European box office).

For those of you heading to Cannes (ash plume permitting), the Observatory is hosting a digital cinema workshop in the Salle Buñuel (Palais des Festivals) on Sunday 16th of May from 3.00 pm to 4.30 pm.

Speakers include Professor Ian Christie, Vice President of Europa Cinemas, Christine Eloy of Europa Distribution, Aviva Silver, Head of the MEDIA Programme of the European Union, and Antoine Virenque, President of the European Digital Cinema Forum. There’ll be a further announcement about European digital cinema data on 12 May.

Plus if the fancy takes you, you can swing around to the Observatory’s stand at the Marché du Film (stand A6 Riviera) and collect your free copy of FOCUS 2010: World Film Market Trends (a PDF version will be available online in due course).

Australian theatrical market update, 2009

And so to the business of working through the backlog.

Screen Australia released a series of updates to its Get the Picture resource a couple of weeks back.

Among the new data is an updated list of top grossing films at the Australian box office; annual admissions and box office gross totals, plus the top performing titles in 2009 by country of origin; average cinema ticket prices in 2009; and data on the growth of digital screens.

Brief highlights as follows:

• Avatar is the highest grossing film of all time in Australia, having taken Aus$108,621,853 by 7 March 2010, the first film released in Australia to earn over Aus$100 million.
• Total box office gross stood at Aus$1,087.5 million in 2009, up 15% on the previous year.
• Admissions also rose, by more than 7% to 90.7 million.
• The average ticket price was Aus$11.99, a rise of 21% over the past four years.
• The number of digital screens has risen from 27 in 2006 to 311 in 2009.

Check out the full list of updates for further information.

Incidentally, you can find additional commentary by Ellen Pittleman on the Australian theatrical market in Screenline’s 2009 Global Box Office Review (which covers other territories as well; reports for Brazil, China and France have recently been published). It’s all available for free and well worth a look.

UK cinema admissions and UK feature production activity, Q1 2010

Volcanic hyperemesis and bureaucratic incompetence conspired to keep me and the family in Portugal for a week longer than planned, hence the lack of recent posts. But at least we enjoyed a few more days at arm’s length from election campaigning (more of which later).

Looking across various news feeds, trade publications and assorted correspondence I see it’s been quite a fecund period for the type of research of interest here. I won’t attempt to cover it all in a single post, so expect a burst of activity over the next week as I work through the backlog.

To ease back into the swing of things, let’s begin with a UK-themed update on first quarter activity.

First off, cinema admissions. Last week, cinema advertising firm Pearl and Dean (P&D) was finally sold off for £1 after four years on the market. Regular readers will recall P&D forms one half of the Cinema Advertising Association (along with Digital Cinema Media), the trade association whose charitable work includes releasing monthly admissions data compiled by Nielsen EDI/Rentrak. Here’s hoping P&D’s new owners continue in this same vein in future.

In the meantime, the CAA has released admissions numbers for March, allowing us to gauge the strength of the UK theatrical market during the first quarter of the year. It’s a positive picture, with a total of 14,482,606 tickets shifted in March- the strongest performance for the month in recent memory.

This brings the total for the first three months of the year to 43,957,027, up 6% on the same period in 2009, and the highest figure since 2002 (Figure 1). Clearly the big screen continues to work its magic on audiences.

Figure 1: UK cinema admissions, Q1 (January to March) 2002 to 2010

Source: CAA/ Rentrak

Turning to UK feature production, the UK Film Council has released the latest data from its regular tracking work, covering the first three months of the year. 23 feature films with budgets of £500k or more started principal photography in the UK during this period, the lowest number since 2005 (Table 1).

Source: UK Film Council

The number of UK domestic features (those made by a UK production company and produced wholly or partly in the UK) and inward investment features (those that are ‘substantially financed and controlled from outside the UK, where the production is attracted to the UK because of script requirements, the UK’s infrastructure or UK tax incentives’) both fell from the level seen in 2009. On the positive side, the decline in UK co-production activity appears to have stabilised, for the time being at least.

The money spent in the UK on making these features stood at £426.5 million, which is considerably lower than the amount spent in 2009 (£485.1 million), but remains higher than the levels of previous years (Table 2).

Source: UK Film Council

Honouring their commitment to provide market intelligence specifically about UK independent films, the UK Film Council reports 2010 saw less activity than in recent years (Table 3), although this is ‘principally due to the decline in co-productions’.

Source: UK Film Council

Interestingly, the median budget of UK independent films (£3.0 million) was higher during the first quarter of 2010 than it has been for some time (between 2007 and 2009 the figure hovered around £1.9 million). This is due to the fact that four of the 18 UK indie features had budgets over £5 million.

The report ends with a projection of full year production activity based on Q1 results. The UK Film Council tentatively suggests the year could see UK production spend hit £907 million in 2010, making it ‘one of the better years on record’.

Given the hefty contribution of inward investment activity to this total, much will depend on the continued attractiveness of the UK as a production base for US studio productions; and the outcome of the general election may prove influential. If we're to believe the pundits, a hung Parliament may further weaken the pound on the international currency markets, and a stronger dollar makes the UK more attractive for inward investment features.

While on the subject of the election, Labour is the only party to mention film explicitly in their manifesto. ‘The strength of Britain’s film industry’, we’re told, ‘is a source of pride'. Labour has committed to maintain the film tax credit and to proceed with the BFI/ UK Film Council merger. In other words, business as we've come to expect it, except of course there’ll be a lot less public money available for film over the next Parliament.

Meanwhile, neither the Liberal Democrats nor the Conservatives mention film in their manifestos, which is hardly surprising given all the urgent matters of State requiring attention (in which context, Labour’s manifesto reference is all the more remarkable).

The Liberal Democrats talk of safeguarding the future of ‘Britain’s creative industries’ by ‘supporting upgrades to our digital infrastructure and taking action to tackle illegal file-sharing’, and of fostering ‘an environment in which all forms of creativity are able to flourish’. This will be principally by means of a Creative Enterprise Fund offering ‘training, mentoring and small grants or loans to help creative businesses get off the ground’. But past evidence suggests getting creative businesses off the ground is rarely a problem- it's keeping them afloat and thriving that proves challenging.

The Conservative manifesto makes only glancing reference to ‘arts and heritage’, but not film per se. This is disappointing, especially given publication late last year of Maud Mansfield’s ‘Report on the British Film Industry for Shadow DCMS’. It's a rather admirable document, both balanced and well-researched.

Alas, none of it found its way into the main manifesto, which talks of ‘making Britain a European hub for hi-tech, digital and creative industries’ (whatever that means). We do know the Conservatives plan to scrap the Regional Development Agencies, which will affect the Regional Screen Agencies whom they co-fund and, therefore, support for film in England.

There's little point in speculating further about future film policy. We'll know more next week...

UK films at the world box office in 2009

Figures released by the UK Film Council show the UK's share of world box office gross fell to its lowest level since records began in their present form in 2002 (Figure 1). As the chart makes clear, it's a wildly fluctuating picture year-on-year, driven by the performance of a small number of big hits.

UK films grossed around $2 billion in 2009, a 6.7% share of the total global theatrical market, down from 15.1% in 2008 when The Dark Knight, Quantum of Solace and Mamma Mia! topped the rankings (Table 1).

The highest grossing UK films in 2009 were led by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Slumdog Millionaire and Sherlock Holmes.

The UK Film Council expects UK market share to climb again in 2010, courtesy of some big inward investment feature releases during the year (starting with Clash of the Titans, which opens in April in most territories, and ending with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I as the year closes).

Figure 1: UK films global market share 2002 to 2009 (click to enlarge)

Sources: MPAA, Screen Digest, UK Film Council

Table 1: Top three UK films at the global box office, 2002 to 2009

Sources: MPAA, Screen Digest, UK Film Council             *still on release as at 25 March 2010

Montage: French film in 2009; MPAA theatrical market statistics; FDA Yearbook; digital cinema; UK facilities sector

What a week it’s been for film business research. I'm struggling to keep up.

On Tuesday the Centre national de la cinématographie (CNC) published an overview of French film production in 2009, followed on Wednesday with news of the 2009 worldwide box office from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). 

And only yesterday the Film Distributors Association (FDA), a UK trade body, published its statistical Yearbook at a launch hosted by FDA President Lord Puttnam.

This joyous bestowal of manna from heaven is not just confined to the last seven days. The previous week saw a digital cinema update from Screen Digest, and the UK Screen Association released its study of the UK facilities sector.

A surfeit of statistics indeed, but it'd be churlish to complain. Let's loosen our belts and get stuck in, starting with the CNC report (Bilan de la production cinématographique en 2009).

The press release paints a sobering picture: production investment fell by over one quarter (26.3%) to stand at €1.1 billion in 2009, compared with €1.5 billion in 2008. And fewer films were made during the last year, declining from 240 in 2008 to 230.

Of these, fewer were big budget features, and there was a consequent decrease in average budget size, which stood at €5.1 million in 2009 compared with €5.6 million in 2008 (adjusted to counter the distorting effect of the very highest budget films in 2008). For the first time since 2002, no French majority production was budgeted over €40 million. The full report also goes into detail about investment by French broadcasters and the CNC itself, and provides an overview of co-production activity plus plenty of other telling insights.

Over the pond, the MPAA’s Theatrical Market Statistics 2009 report serves up an equally hearty portion of market intelligence, ranging across worldwide box office and admissions trends, audience demographics, screen numbers and US production levels.

Briefly:

• Global box office gross totalled $29.9 billion, an increase of 7.6% over 2008;
• The US/Canada box office hit $10.6 billion, up more than 10% year on year;
• 3D releases accounted for 11% of the US/Canada total, compared with 2% in 2008 (and this from only 20 3D releases in 2009, up from eight the year before);
• 1.4 billion cinema tickets were sold in US/Canada, rising 5.5% over 2008- the first such increase in two years. Admissions per capita also increased to 4.3 in 2009. According to the press release, ‘sales were fuelled by repeated visits to the cinema by frequent moviegoers – those who go to the movies once a month or more and who make up only 10% of the population – who bought half of all tickets sold in 2009’;
• Worldwide there were around 150,000 screens, and 11% of these (16,000) are digital (more on this later);
• There were 6,039 cinema sites in the US, and Megaplexes (with 16 or more screens), which account for 29% of all screens, saw strongest growth in 2009. Almost half (46%) of all screens are now located in Multiplexes (8-15 screens), and single screen venues represent just 4% of the total.
• The production of US films has declined over the last three years, and in 2009 the number released in the US decreased 12%, the first such decline since 2003. The press release attributes this to all manner of recent trials and tribulations including, ‘labor issues affecting the industry in 2007-08, the recession and the challenges to investment recovery due to rampant content theft, and the decline in DVD sales.’

Check out the full report (a free PDF download) for further detail and some eye-catching time series charts.

Lord Puttnam’s address at the launch of the FDA’s Yearbook made much of the opportunities for new distribution models afforded by digital media and social networking. The Yearbook itself is available on request from the FDA, and according to Stuart Kemp, writing in The Hollywood Reporter, it contains some ‘mouth watering stats’, including the fact that ‘one in every five pounds spent at the UK box office was forked out on comedies last year’, and ‘one in every eight pounds was spent […] on 3D movies’.

This latter point echoes data about the growth of 3D presented by Screen Digest as part of its Cinema Intelligence service. 55% of the 16,405 digital screens worldwide are 3D capable. A Screen Digest press release describes the growth of 3D screens in 2009 as ‘nothing short of explosive, with a global growth rate of 254.5%, but this average is dwarfed by the growth rate of 614% in Western Europe’.

The release also notes tests are being conducted with 3D alternative content (e.g. 3D sports broadcasts), a subject previously covered in a Screen Digest report dedicated to alternative content (which was also addressed by Beyond Live: digital innovation in the performing arts, a study of live theatre screenings in cinemas by Hasan Bakhshi and Juan Mateos-Garcia of NESTA and Professor David Throsby).

Anyway, here’s what David Hancock, Screen Digest’s Head of Film and Cinema, had to say about the revitalising potential of digital roll out:

“The release of Avatar was the BC/AD moment for digital cinema, taking us from the prehistory of the first 10 years, characterized by research, false commercial starts, standards development and early pioneers, to the modern world of commercial cinema as it will be in the decades to come. Digital 3D, opera, theatre, music and comedy in cinemas, live 3D sport, and interactive adverts are all a part of cinema in the future; not just a place to watch movies but a multi-arts venue which can be the heart of small and large communities alike. The refreshment of cinema is firmly underway and it is now taking its place as an integral part of the digital media landscape on the one hand, and as a revitalised leisure venue on the other.”

The UK Facilities Sector: a key contributor to the film and television industries and to the UK’s creative economy, a study undertaken by Olsberg SPI and Trends Business Research on behalf of UK Screen Association, Ascent Media and the UK Film Council, shines a light on an oft overlooked part of the business- the all important facilities sector, which includes post-production, equipment hire, visual effects, graphics, transmission services, studios, outside broadcast and physical effects companies.

According to the press release, the study estimates the UK sector had an annual turnover of £2.2 billion in 2008.

Other key findings to note:

• The sector comprises 1,300 companies, employing more than 25,000 people.
• Despite this large number of companies, ‘only a very few have achieved scale in their operations’.  The sector is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises, with 99% of firms employing fewer than 250 people, and 78% employing fewer than 10.

The report also contains an obligatory ‘economic impact’ assessment for 2008, with an estimate of jobs generated by the sector (50,850), the sector's Gross Value Added (totalling £1.6 billion) and contribution to the Exchequer (£262 million, excluding VAT).

There, we made it. Here's hoping for a quiet weekend.

UK cinema admissions, January 2010

I’m guessing at this very moment there’s a pair of black tuxedo trousers awaiting service in a dry cleaners somewhere in southern California.

Inside one of the trouser pockets is a single sheet of crumpled paper, an unread acceptance speech that begins in the spirit of, ‘I’d like to thank so many people, starting with my blah blah…’, and ends something like:  ‘I'VE CONQUERED THE THIRD DIMENSION...I AM THE EMPEROR OF THE UNIVERSE! etc.’

Of course, James Cameron wasn’t the only runner-up at last Sunday’s Oscar® ceremony. But he’s certainly become the most talked (and written) about. Still, there’s surely consolation in knowing that Avatar has generated revenues that would bring an embarrassed flush even to the cheeks of the Goldman Sachs board (worldwide box office gross total currently stands at around $2.6 billion according to The Numbers).

By last weekend (5-7 March), Avatar had shifted nearly £89 million worth of cinema tickets in the UK. It is by far and away the largest haul in recent box office history, and a quite staggering achievement. But that doesn’t mean there’s been a bonanza in cinema admissions during the twelve weeks since the film was first released, as the latest UK admissions numbers released by the Cinema Advertising Association show. That’s because Avatar’s commercial success has been boosted by the higher ticket prices charged for digital 3D screenings.

According to the CAA figures, January saw 14,583,485 admissions, a mere 0.5% rise over the same month in 2009. The inclement weather played its part: ice and snow brought what headline writers describe as ‘travel chaos’ to much of the country. Even so, January 2010 narrowly recorded the highest admissions for the month since 2004, and Avatar generated the lion share.

Figure 1: January cinema admissions, 2002 to 2010

Source: Cinema Advertising Association/ Rentrak

By the way, it’s all change over on the Digital Cinema Media (DCM) web site. DCM (Carlton Screen Advertising, as was) is one half of the Cinema Advertising Association (along with Pearl & Dean), and they’ve recently revamped their online shop window.

Fortunately DCM has retained the bit of most interest here, UK monthly admissions data, although the section is no longer labelled as such. DCM now describes admissions as ‘impacts’, which is marketing speak for eyeballs on screen, as opposed to bums on seats in old parlance. It's a purely semantic difference because the underlying data are exactly the same.

Unblocked at last

I recently came across mention of BPR in a student blog. The author writes encouragingly of the ‘quality and depth’ of my posts, but wonders when I find the time to ‘eat or sleep or go to the toilet’.

For the record I can confirm my basic biological needs are attended to. I find the knack is not to do any two of them at the same time.

Ironically, the student’s post coincided with the longest period of inactivity on this blog since it started in June 2008.

This is principally due to an abundance of paid work, because of necessity I have developed the freelancer’s aversion to saying ‘no’. In consequence, gainful employment (rather than eating, sleeping or the other) has kept me from blogging.

The weather hasn’t helped. February, the season of sniffles and fellow mournfulness, always casts me into a bit of a funk.

Then a curious thing happened: I developed blogger's block. The longer I left writing the next post, the easier it was not to bother at all.

But now the paid work flow has eased somewhat, and the days are getting discernibly longer, I feel able to pick up the pace again; starting with a skim through some of the more notable research items since I last posted.

The 60th Berlin International Film Festival came and went during the month, and to mark the occasion the European Audiovisual Observatory published its annual round up of admissions and box office data. The Observatory estimates total EU admissions increased to around 985 million in 2009, up 6.5% on the 2008 tally and marking the highest level since 2004.

According to the press release:

Admissions increased in 18 out of the 24 EU member states for which data were available. In absolute terms Germany registered the most significant growth (+16.9 million, +13.1%), followed by France (+10.9 million, +5.7%), the United Kingdom (+9.3 million, +5.6%) and Poland (+5.4 million, +16.1%). For the first time in the past five years Spain reported an increase in admissions (+2.8%), whereas attendance decreased marginally in Italy (-0.4%).

Click to enlarge:

Source: European Audiovisual Observatory

There was more European-themed news this month with the launch of Screenbase, an online database of European film information courtesy of Screen International. If you’re not a Screen International subscriber be advised to check out the database while you can. It’s free to use during beta stage, but will soon be bricked up behind the Screen Daily pay wall.

At a time when trade publications like Screen International are switching online business models it’s heartening to find a new service that’s free at the point of use (for the time being, at least). Hong Kong based Film Business Asia, co-founded by Patrick Frater and Stephen Cremin, provides a business news and data service built on information contained in ‘a multilingual database of Asian cinema that has been in active development since 1993’.

The beta site launched in January this year, and is due for a ‘fuller launch’ in Q2 2010, when some form of pay wall may well come into operation.

‘Get in there while you can’ is a recurring theme of this post. Which reminds me: I have to see a man about a dog, so if you'll excuse me...

2009 box office and admissions round up: Australia, Denmark, Hungary, Romania

Screen Australia recently released its analysis of Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia data, with news that the Australian box office totalled AUS$1.09 billion in 2009, the highest on record and an increase of 16% on 2008’s haul. (The press release doesn’t give an annual admissions total).

Of the 418 films released in Australia during the year, 50 were local productions which shared 5% of the market (AUS$54.8 million). Bruce Beresford’s Mao’s Last Dancer was the top performing Australian title, grossing $15 million.

Screen Australia reports that the 34 British films on release secured 9% of the market in 2009 (AUS$98.2 million), and US films shared 83% (AUS$899.4 million).

The press release also sheds some interesting light on the way Screen Australia is developing its approach to measuring and reporting audiences for Australian film.

“Our Research Unit has been analysing case studies of films over their entire first-release life cycle”, notes Dr Ruth Harley, Screen Australia CEO.

“Kokoda, for example, which took $3.2 million at the box office in 2006, recorded approximately 316,000 admissions. The film went on to achieve in excess of 1.3 million viewings in the two and a half years from cinema release to first free-to-air television broadcast. Cinema admissions accounted for just 24 per cent of these viewings […] It’s a high priority for Screen Australia in 2010 to better understand downstream viewings as we refine a new range of measures to reflect audience engagement with Australian screen production.”

Hopefully these new measures will also factor in audiences for Australian films viewed on digital platforms, including online and mobile devices. (An aside: just imagine if a public agency had the courage to publish data about the incidence of file sharing of its national films, not as an indicator of illegal or unethical activity but as another metric for audience engagement...)

Back to reality, and over in Denmark cinema admissions increased slightly in 2009, rising from 13.1 million in 2008 to 13.9 million. Disappointingly, Danish films achieved a market share of 17% (2.4 million admissions), the lowest level since 2000 and a fall from 33% in 2008 (when local blockbuster Flame and Citron performed strongly). The top performing Danish title, Anders Matthesen’s What Goes Around, garnered 402,000 admissions, while Lars von Trier’s Antichrist mustered only 83,000 (was it something the fox said?).

Hungary saw cinema admissions total 9.3 million in 2009, pretty much on a par with 2008, and Hungarian films shared around 10% of ticket sales. Meanwhile box office gross for the year rose by just over 10%, although no total is given in the report carried by Film New Europe.

Another report by Film New Europe puts Romanian admissions at 4.6 million in 2009, a rise of 43% on the previous year. Box office gross totalled 78.2 million RON, up by 60% on 2008’s total. No market share for local films is given.

All these numbers, and those of previous posts, are summarised in the table below.

Table 1: Selected 2009 admissions, box office gross and national market shares

Numbers above 1 have been rounded to nearest whole integer
* UK and Republic of Ireland box office gross = £1.05 billion.
** This total is for all UK-qualifying films, including inward investment features made with US studio involvement. UK films produced independently of US studios shared 8.5% of the home market.

'-' data unavailable

Sources:
Screen Australia, China Film Group, CNC, Cinetel, Cineuropa.org, Film New Europe, Nielsen EDI, UK Film Council, Adams Media Research.

2009 box office and admissions round up: Estonia, Finland, Greece and UK update

Here’s another batch of 2009 box office and admissions data reported in recent days by Cineuropa.org and Film New Europe.

The 161 titles released theatrically in Estonia clocked up 1.78 million admissions, a rise of 11% on 2008 (Ice Age 3, the top placed film of the year, sold 186,000 tickets). Local films fared less well, sharing only 2% of the market, and no Estonian picture made it into the top ten performers for the first time in seven years.

Finland saw annual admissions fall by 2.4% to 6.7 million, and Finnish films shared 15% of the local market (down from 23% in 2008). Four local titles surpassed 100,000 ticket sales:  Aleksi Mäkelä's Hellsinki (256,000 admissions), Dome Karukoski’s Forbidden Fruit (115,147 admissions) and Timo Koivusalo’s Under the North Star (101,152 admissions).

Greece followed a similar pattern to Estonia in 2009, with annual admissions rising 30% to 13.5 million, while local films’ market share fell to 12.6% (down from 19.2% the previous year). 2012 was the biggest selling film (477,500 admissions), followed by Angels and Demons (414,000) and Quantum of Solace (391,000). Bang Bang was the highest placed Greek film, pulling in 382,000 admissions.

Figures released by the UK Film Council earlier this week confirm the annual box office and admissions totals reported previously. The new report (The UK box office in 2009) also reveals UK films achieved a market share of 16.5% in 2009, down from 31.1% in 2008 (when The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia! led the rankings) and the lowest share figure since 2003 (when it stood at 15.9%).

On the plus side, the UK Film Council has been good to its word by drawing a clearer distinction between the market performance of all UK-qualifying films (including those backed by US studios, like the Harry Potter franchise) and those UK films produced independently of the studios. This latter category actually saw a rise in market share in 2009, increasing from 5.7% in 2008 to 8.5% in 2009 (the average for the period 2000 to 2009 is 5.4%).

Table 1: Selected 2009 admissions, box office revenues and national market shares

Numbers above 1 have been rounded to nearest whole integer.
* UK and Republic of Ireland box office gross = £1.05 billion.
** This total is for all UK-qualifying films, including inward investment features made with US studio involvement. UK films produced independently of US studios shared 8.5% of the home market.

'-' = data unavailable

Sources:
China Film Group, CNC, Cinetel, Cineuropa.org, Film New Europe, Nielsen EDI, UK Film Council, Adams Media Research.

2009 box office and admissions round up: China, France, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Spain and the US

As expected, various trade bodies, film agencies and commercial data providers have released year-end box office and admissions numbers over the last couple of weeks, and the picture is a positive one for theatrical exhibition around the world. Here's the first tranche:

China saw its annual box office gross rise 44% above the level recorded in 2008, totalling 6.2 billion yuan ($910 million).

Numbers issued by the China Film Group also include the fact that China produced 456 domestic films in 2009. Nonetheless, the two top grossing movies of 2009 were US studio pictures: 2012 ($67.5 million), and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($63 million). Chinese films shared 56% of the home market, and the best performing local title,  The Founding of a Republic, grossed $61 million.

France also witnessed an impressive year at the box office. Admissions totalled 200.85 million according to estimates by the Centre national de la cinématographie (CNC). This marks a rise of 5.7% over 2008, and the annual total is the second highest in forty years.

French films shared 37.1% of total admissions, which is lower than 2008’s market share (45.3%, largely down to the success of Welcome to the Sticks). US features shared 48.8% of total admissions.

Italy saw box office revenues grow in 2009 (by nearly 5%, to €623 million), but total admissions fell slightly, down 0.3% to 99 million, according to data released by Cinetel.

The Netherlands (whose main public film bodies have recently merged into a new film institute known ominously as eye) fared much better, with a 15.2% increase in ticket sales in 2009 (totalling 27.2 million). Dutch films recorded a market share of 17.4%, pretty much unchanged from 2008.

Poland scored a record high with 38 million admissions in 2009, up from 34 million in 2008 (+11.7%). According to  Dorota Hartwic, writing for Cineuropa.org, the 29 Polish features on release garnered 8.7 million admissions, a market share of 22.9%.

Staying with Eastern Europe, Slovenia saw annual admissions rise 8% to over 2.6 million, according to Matevz Rudolf writing for Film New Europe. Over 140 films were distributed in the country, of which five features and two documentaries were made in Slovenia. These local pictures shared less than 2% of total admissions, and the most successful local title, Slovenian Girl, sold 18,000 tickets.

Provisional data from Nielsen EDI indicates a successful year at the Spanish box office. The territory saw 110 million admissions, with box office grosses totalling around €675 million, the ‘highest  figure in the history of Spanish cinema’, according to Cineuropa.org’s Sergio Ríos Pérez. Local film market share is expected to be around 15%.

And finally, news broke last week that the US box office out-performed sales of feature films on DVD and Blu-ray for the first time since 2002.

Figures compiled by Adams Media Research show that US box office receipts stood at $9.87 billion in 2009, compared with DVD and Blu-ray feature film sales of $8.73 billion (sales of all works on DVD and Blu-ray, including TV shows, stood at $13 billion). Film DVD and Blu-ray revenues fell by 13%, while box office gross rose by 10%.

The table below summarises these numbers, including the UK’s provisional box office total published last week, which the UK Film Council will confirm on Tuesday along with UK films' share of the home market.

Table 1: Selected 2009 admissions, box office revenues and national market shares

Sources: China Film Group, CNC, Cinetel, Cineuropa.org, Film New Europe, Nielsen EDI, UK Film Council, Adams Media Research.

'-' = data unavailable

Video Business closes, sneak peak UK boffo 2009, UKFC research in the spotlight

This year’s first post is something of a hodgepodge. A sudden flurry of blogworthy stories has settled like the first dusting of snow, doubtless a precursor to the blizzard of year-end box office and admissions announcements we can expect over the coming days.

I’ll begin on a sombre note, with news that Video Business ceased publication last week, as owner Reed Business Information (which also owns Variety) offloads its US business-to-business titles. Video Business has been covering the home entertainment market for nearly thirty years, charting every up and down and shake of the dice. It will be missed chiefly because home entertainment market data are not as ubiquitous as box office numbers, and informed commentary carries a premium in such circumstances (though clearly not one that pays in the long-run...).

Onto more uplifting news, and last week The Independent profiled Tim Richards, CEO of Vue Entertainment in the UK. The article makes for interesting reading, touching as it does a range of topics including the company's digital cinema plans, 3D's gathering momentum and the lack of brand awareness among multiplex visitors ("It pains me to say this," admits Richards, "but 65% to 75% of people leaving the cinema can't tell you the name of it. They can tell you about the services but not the name").

We also learn, in passing, that the UK box office totalled £1.05 billion in 2009, up 11% on 2008. That’s according to UK Film Council figures due for ‘official’ publication on 19 January. The blizzard starts here.

While on the subject of the UK Film Council, the Research & Statistics Unit has just published findings of a user survey it ran last autumn. The timing couldn’t be better, because just before Christmas the organisation was criticised by Colin McCabe for publishing statistics that ‘tend to reflect rather too well on the Council’.

In an ‘anti-New Labour polemic’ published by Prospect magazine (and reproduced in full on McCabe’s blog), the academic and former Head of the BFI Production Board calls, among other things, for the UKFC to hand over its research function to the BFI.

Yet there’s little evidence in the survey report to suggest that users consider the UKFC’s research activity to be self-serving. If anything, the 400+ users who responded to the survey are, by and large, satisfied (and in many cases very satisfied) with the RSU’s work and publications. Self-serving or not, the RSU provides a service that others value. And that is as it should be.

UK cinema admissions, November 2009

As the year races towards its inevitable conclusion, the latest set of numbers from the Cinema Advertising Association shows 2009's admissions continued to out perform every other year since 2002.

November saw ticket sales totalling 14,913,425, 10% higher than the previous year's tally for the same month.

That puts the year to date (1 January to 30 November 2009) total at 157,196,254 (Figure 1).

The year end total for 2009 looks highly unlikely to top 2002's record, but this year will almost certainly be the best placed runner-up, above 2004 (my money's on 173 million). We'll find out soon enough: expect December's numbers to appear early in the new year, along with a figure for the annual box office gross total.

Figure 1: UK cinema admissions, January - November 2002 to 2009

Source: Cinema Advertising Association/Nielsen EDI

Montage: film in Russia and alternative cinema content globally

In between toiling to service the debt I call home and navigating the twinkly distractions of the festive season, there’s just time for a quick round up of recent(ish) film research developments, beginning with last week’s publication by the European Audiovisual Observatory of a report on the Russian movie business.

The Film Industry in The Federation of Russia (November 2009), produced for the Observatory by Nevafilm and Rfilms, covers a gratifyingly wide terrain. Starting with an overview of Russian state film policy, the report includes data on cinema exhibition for the period 2004 to 2008 (admissions, box office revenues, screen numbers, digital screen growth etc.), a summary of Russian film production activity between 2004 and mid-2009, and provides a sizeable slab of DVD market intelligence for good measure (which is very welcome given the paucity of publicly available home entertainment data in most territories).

Some noteworthy headline data:

• Russian cinema admissions have grown at an average annual rate of 14% between 2004 and 2008, and average admissions per head have almost doubled over the period.
• Rising ticket prices have helped to increase box office takings, which have grown on average 32% every year since 2004. 
• This is remarkable given that the overall number of screens in Russia has almost halved since 2005, although older screens are being replaced by modern ones in malls and 'entertainment complexes' at an unprecedented rate. By July 2009 Russia had 1,949 ‘modern’ screens in 756 cinema sites. 
• Digital cinema has taken off since arriving in October 2006. By July 2009 there were 161 digital screens in Russia (8% of all ‘modern’ screens).
• Over RUB 25 billion (just under $1 billion) was invested in feature production between 2004 and mid-2009, but since 2008 there is evidence that production has ‘cooled’, partly in response to a reduction in funding for new features by the Ministry of Culture.
• 83.8 million DVD units were sold in 2008, up nearly one quarter (24%) on 2007. Russian content accounted for around 20% of all DVD releases in 2008. However, the market in 2009 looks to be less buoyant, and the report quotes a trade journal forecast predicting an 8% fall in unit sales this year.

The report presents plenty more detail for the interested reader, and it comes highly recommended not least because the Observatory has made it available as a free download in English and Russian. Spasiba!

(Incidentally, Nevafilm’s web site also has links to dedicated reports on digital cinema in the Russian Federation along with other aspects of the local business; it's well worth checking out: http://nevafilm.ru/english/reports).

On the subject of digital cinema, last October I posted about Martin Barker’s audience research study looking at alternative content at the cinema (e.g. live opera and stage performances beamed by satellite into cinemas). Towards the end of last month details of a new report on the subject appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

The Screen Digest research (Alternative Content in Cinemas: Market assessment and forecasts to 2014) predicts earnings from alternative content will top $500 million globally by 2014, rising from $45.7 million at the end of 2008.

Recent growth has been fueled by the increase in digital screens, which number over 12,000 globally, and there's clearly a buck to be made thanks to high ticket prices (according to The Hollywood Reporter, ‘some opera-in-cinema tickets in the U.K. sell at £35 [$59] and boost occupancy rates in what are often traditional downtimes’).

Further details, and a full list of contents, can be found over on the Screen Digest site.

UK cinema admissions, October 2009

It’s that time again (how quick the new month comes around…). The Cinema Advertising Association (CAA) has just published the latest batch of UK admissions figures, which show ticket sales remain at their highest level since 2002 (Figure 1).

October 2009 saw 13,538,178 admissions, a rise of 5% on ticket sales in the same month last year, marking the strongest October performance since 2005.

This brings the total for January to October 2009 to 142,282,829 admissions, compared with 138,390,384 for the same period in 2008 (a rise of 3%). That’s much the same level of growth seen in the US, according to year-to-date (29.11.09) figures published yesterday by Variety.

Figure 1: UK cinema admissions, January to October 2002 - 2009

Source: CAA/Nielsen EDI

UK cinema admissions, August 2009

The August tally is in, courtesy of the Cinema Advertising Association, and ticket sales in 2009 remain up on the same period last year but the margin is narrowing.

August saw 15,542,650 admissions, which falls well short of 2008's haul of 20,039,500 in the same month thanks to the runaway success of Mamma Mia! and The Dark Knight. The late summer period this year was always going to pale in comparison.

But such was the strength of the opening half of the year that the total for 2009 (119,041,616) remains 4% above 2008, and a squeak higher than the most recent record high in 2002.

Table 1: UK cinema admissions, January to August 2002 to 2009

Source: CAA/ Nielsen EDI

UK cinema admissions, July 2009

This year’s cinema admissions are shaping up to be the strongest we’ve seen for a generation according to the latest figures issued by the Cinema Advertising Association.

July saw 20,039,500 ticket sales, which puts the total for the first seven months of 2009 (103,498,966) up nearly 10% on the same period in 2008.

In fact ticket sales between the beginning of January and the end of July 2009  are higher than the same period in 2002, when the total stood at 102,696,536 (see Figure 1).

2002 is a significant comparator because it closed with the highest annual admissions since 1971 (on the back of strong performances from the likes of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Monsters, Inc., Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones and Die Another Day).

I don’t yet have a list of the top performing titles in July, but it should appear on Pearl and Dean’s web site any day now.

Figure 1: UK cinema admissions, January to July 2009

Source: Cinema Advertising Association

Montage: Sweden H1 2009 admissions and box office; US DVD rental kiosks; Pinewood Shepperton trading report

Figures released by the Swedish Film Institute reveal strong growth in cinema admissions during the first half of 2009.

7,570,828 tickets were sold in the first six months of the year, a rise of 27% on the same period in 2008. Total box office gross also rose, up 36% to SEK 655,031,193.

It’s heartening to see that Swedish films shared 32% of the market, largely down to the success of local title The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which clocked over 1 million admissions. According to Thomas Bryntesson, Head of Statistics at the SFI, these figures 'show again that during a recession, cinema attendance tends to remain strong.' (quoted in Cineuropa.org).

Table 1: H1 admissions and box office gross in selected countries

Sources: Filme B, Nielsen EDI, CAA, Danish Film Institute, Cineuropa.org, Federation of Spanish Cinemas, State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, Korean Film Council, Cinetel, Bunka Tsushin, boxoffice.pl, CNC, Swedish Film Institute.
Notes: Figures have been rounded. ‘-‘ = data not yet available

Moving to home entertainment, and the latest issue of Variety provides further coverage of strained relations in Hollywood over the growth of the DVD rental kiosk business, led by Coinstar’s Redbox service. Correspondent Marcy Magiera cites a new study by NPD that forecasts the DVD-rental kiosk business (which offers overnight rentals for $1) will hold 30% of the rental market by the close of 2010 (up from 19% currently).

As Magiera notes,

‘Hollywood is clearly divided over Redbox and its rivals. There's been a flurry of litigation over the kiosks -- Warner Home Video, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and Universal Studios Home Entertainment are trying to impose a delayed window of 30 days or more on kiosk rentals, and Redbox is suing them as a result.’

These studios are concerned that cheap rentals cannibalize new DVD sales, and evidence from Rentrak does indeed reveal a slump in DVD sales in the first half of 2009 (-13.5%) compared with a rise of 8% in consumer spending on DVD and Blu-ray rentals. Still, at least these punters are actually paying for content and not (exclusively) frequenting unauthorised online sources...

Finally, Pinewood Shepperton, the UK studio and facilities group, recently issued a trading statement (Regulatory Announcement) for the period 1 January 2009 to 30 June 2009, providing a nifty vantage point from which to gauge UK production activity.

Revenues totalled £20.3 million during the first half of the year, down 6.5% from £21.7 million in the first half of 2008. Operating profit was also down, from £4.8 million in 2008 to £3.3 million, and profit before tax stood at £1.7 million.

Commenting on the results, Ivan Dunleavy, Chief Executive of Pinewood Shepperton plc, said: 

'The marginally lower year on year film revenues reflect the impact of the Screen Actors Guild dispute. The results reflect a solid performance in television and demonstrate the value of our Media Park where revenues increased. Looking forward, film revenues for the remainder of the year will depend, as ever, on the timing of new film starts in the latter part of the second half. Television revenues are expected to be stable, despite broadcasters' programming cuts. Media Park revenues should remain robust.'

While the SAG dispute played its part, film revenues were also affected by what the Announcement calls ‘wider economic pressure’, which has ‘tightened the access to film financing’. The result: ‘producers are taking longer to commence productions’.

We’ll no doubt see the continuing effects of this on the wider UK production sector when the UK Film Council publishes feature production statistics for the third quarter 2009 in October (see their statistics release calendar for details).

Vive le cinéma: France admissions, H1 2009

You’ve got to admire a country that holds cinema so dear to its national heart. That’s one of the thoughts I've come away with fresh back from holidaying in France, where film in general is accorded the kind of natural, unconditional love of a parent for a child (the progeny of les frères Lumière?).

To this end the French state nurtures and supports film production, distribution, exhibition and export through a cluster of bodies including the Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC), Unifrance etc.

We have a similar settlement in the UK, but cinema’s status as a worthy and legitimate art form, a necessary part of national cultural discourse, is so well embedded in France it hardly needs stating. Compare and contrast with the situation in the UK, where film can only secure a place at the grown-up’s table if it sits in line with all the other ‘creative industries’.

A case in point: We stayed in an eerily quiet rural commune in the Côtes-d'Armor region of Brittany, where on first inspection there were many more cows than people, many more people than considerate drivers and many more considerate drivers than usable public conveniences (and with the exchange rate such as it is, many more usable public conveniences than affordable beverages). In short, a typical Gallic idyll.

The nearest village to us had a bar, a disproportionately grand church and an Artisan Boulanger. That was it. Yet displayed in the window of the boulangerie, next to the dusty remnants of baking knickknacks, was a poster listing the films playing throughout the month of August at the nearest cinema, some 20 km away. There were no other notices, civic or otherwise, on display. The boulangerie is a social hub in such villages, a place to get your daily bread even when the church is dormant, and catch up on gossip. So this listings poster is a good example of canny promotion by the local exhibitor. But it also illustrates the place of cinema at the heart of the community.

What has any of this to do with film research? Not much, really, but it's fresh in my mind and leads into an update on French cinema admissions for the first half of 2009. The CNC recently published the number of tickets sold in June (11.46 million), bringing the total for the first six months of the year to 97.18 million, 4.3% fewer admissions than the same period in 2008.

June admissions were actually up 5.5% on the same month last year, and the decline in ticket sales during the first half of the year compared to 2008 is largely down to the phenomenal success last year of Dany Boon's Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (Welcome to the Sticks), which went on to become the top performing French film of all time. What a difference a popular title can make, and this is reflected in the market share of home grown films. During the first six months of 2008 French films shared 54% of admissions, compared with 40% this year.

Table 1: H1 admissions and box office, selected territories  

Sources:
Filme B, Nielsen EDI, CAA, Danish Film Institute, Cineuropa.org, Federation of Spanish Cinemas, State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, Korean Film Council, Cinetel, CNC
Notes:
‘-‘ = data unavailable

Incidentally, while scouting around the CNC’s English-language web site I came across a goldmine of historical data (in many cases covering the period 1938 to 2008), presented in a section called ‘sectoral statistics’ as a series of downloadable excel spreadsheets and PDFs. There you’ll find time series data for a range of variables including cinema admissions, average ticket prices and screen numbers, French film exports, films on French TV, film production, audience data, film on video plus a range of key metrics for selected international territories. Everything, in fact, except annual baguette sales. Shame: I wonder if there's a correlation...