10/01/2005

With £838.7m gross in 2004, the UK box office has registered the highest level ever last year, beating the latest B.O. record of £812.2m held in 2002 according to the statistical agency Nielsen EDI. The 3.5% rise in revenues compared to 2003 should be matched by a similar rise in admissions -up 4% with an approximate total of 174million admissions -according to estimates from Carlton Screen Advertising Association (CAA) *.

UK productions and co-productions had a good year thanks to a wide range of genres. Blockbuster sequels such as Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkabar and Bridget Jones: The Edged of Reason were the second and third biggest grossers of the year with £46m and £35m respectively, while the UK/French home-grown genre movies Wimbledon and Shaun of the Dead, both released by UIP performed strongly with over £7.1m and £6.6 each.
The UK/Luxembourg film Girl With a Pearl Earring took an excellent £3.8m and was among a series of box office successes for Pathe Distribution throughout the year. The UK distribution arm of French group Pathe also scored with Bride and prejudice (£5.2m), the Spanish language films The Motorcycle Diaries (£2.7m) Bad Education (£1.3m) and the French/UK co-production Two Brothers (£1.3m).

In a market always dominated by the US majors (79.7% market-share), Pathe took the 7th position with a 2.8% market-share, just after the traditionally strong Entertainment Film Distributors (7.9% market-share). Momentum Pictures had also a very good year thanks mostly to the £10m gross of Lost in Translation, its biggest title ever, and finished with a 2.2% market-share.
Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 also gave the other independent distributor Optimum Releasing its biggest gross ever with £6.5m.
Among the five big US distributors, UIP took the largest slice of the UK market with 29.8% thanks notably to Shrek 2, the biggest grosser of the year (48.1m), followed by Warner Bros (14.7% of the market), BVI (14.5%), 20th Century Fox(10.7%) and Sony (10%).