08/01/2026 - Italian film is strengthening its market share, thanks not least to the return of Checco Zalone, whose movie was the biggest box office hit of the year, earning €36 million in a mere 7 days

Checco Zalone in Buen Camino by Gennaro Nunziante

The film market in Italy has remained stable in 2025. According to Cinetel data, presented this morning in Rome and based on a sample of 1,366 cinemas and 3,579 screens, in the year which has just ended, the Italian box office took a total of €496,552,723, with 68,361,056 cinema admissions. This result is in line with both the previous year (with revenue up 0.5% and admissions down 2%) and with 2023 (revenue up 0.2% and admissions down 3.2%), and national cinema contributed to this outcome significantly: in total, Italian film now accounts for 32.7% of earnings and 33.3% of admissions, having taken over €162.4 million in revenue and having sold 22.7 million cinema tickets, which is the best result since 2016.

Leading the revenue rankings for national production is Checco Zalone with his long-awaited return to film, Buen Camino (released on 25 December), which earned €36 million (accounting for 22.2% of total Italian production; to date the film has almost earned 60 million in takings) and recorded 4.4 million admissions in the final 7 days of the year. Next on the podium are Madly [+see also:
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trailer
film profile] by Ferzan Ozpetek (€9.8 million; 1.3 million admissions). The biggest earner overall was Buen Camino, followed by Lilo & Stitch (€22.3 million; 3.1 million admissions), Madly, Avatar: Fire and Ashes (€17.3 million; 1.8 million admissions) and Zootropolis 2 (€16.6 million; 2.1 million admissions).

US film, which led the pack nationality-wise in 2025, took a total of €201,484,025 (accounting for 40.6% of box office takings, down 24.7% on 2024) with admissions numbers equating to 26,965,174 (accounting for 39.4% of total tickets sold, which is down 25.9% on 2024). On the heels of American and Italian film are British film (€77.9 million, equating to a market share of 15.7%), French production (€22.2 million: a market share of 4.5%) and Japanese cinema (€10.4 million: a market share of 2.1%).

In 2025, 1,002 new titles were distributed in cinemas for the first time (an additional 61 titles on 2024), 462 of which were Italian productions or co-productions (up 29 on 2024), accounting for 46.1% of the total share (versus 46% in 2024), while 540 of these titles were foreign productions (up 32 on 2024), accounting for 53.9% of the market share (versus 54% in 2024). In total, 96 titles earned over 1 million euros each in 2025: 59 taking between 1 and 3 million, 14 between 3 and 5 million, 16 between 5 and 10 million, 5 earning between 10 and 20 million, and 2 titles taking upwards of 20 million euros.

The leading distribution firm in 2025 was Walt Disney Italia with total earnings of 107.5 million euros (for a box office market share: 21.7%), followed by Eagle Pictures (60.7 million; 12.2% market share), Warner Bros. Italia (52.8 million; 10.6% market share), Universal Pictures (52.4 million; 10.6% market share) and Medusa Film (51.8 million; 10.4% market share).

(Translated from Italian)