July record month of the year
Cinema admissions in the UK registered their highest level of 2005 last July despite the London bomb attacks on July 7th and 21st.
According to figures just published by the UK Cinema Advertising Association (CAA), as many as 16 million cinema tickets were sold in July, making it an average of 3.6m per week. The most popular film of the month was by far Stephen Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds released on July 1st, which stormed ahead at the top of the chart grossing £26.5m, taking as much as £10m away from its nearest competitor, Deamworks’s animated film Madagascar. As the country was in red alert following London terrorist attacks, UK audiences were obviously drawn to see Spielberg’s disaster film in which the world is engulfed in flames and people struggle to survive as the ‘terror from above’ is imminent.
Other titles with UK involvement that were ranked in July’s top 10 include the UK/US co-productions Charlie And The Chocolate Factory at number 4 (£7.9m), and Batman Begins at number 6 (£5m), and the 100% UK chiller The Descent by Neil Marshall released by Pathé Distribution on July 8th.
Nevertheless, despite stronger figures compared to the previous months of the year, July 2005 was still down from the same month last year when 18.4m tickets were sold. Cinema attendances for the first half in general declined by 8.4% compared to 2004, but also by 3.2% compared to 2003.
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