15/03/2006

To sustain the release of 467 new films in 2005, UK distributors spent £300m (€436m) in prints and advertising (P&A), including £165.8m (€249m) on media advertising, according to the 2006 Yearbook of the Film Distributors’ Association, published last week. Of the total media expenditure, three-quarters was allocated to television advertisements and posters.

Last year’s total box office revenues reached £840.3m (€1.2bn) and 30% of that sum was generated during the last 13 weeks of 2005, due mostly to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the biggest film of the year with a £45.8m gross (€66.5m), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (£41.9m/€60m), and the Oscar-winning animated film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (£32m/€46.5m). The £45.7m (€66.5m) that UK distributors spent on advertising during that period obviously paid off. Overall, the average spent on P&A per film equalled £0.65m (€0.90m), with the average revenue being £1.8m (€2.6m).

In a market dominated by US studios (which took 81.5% of the market share), 189 of the 467 new films on release were US titles, compared to 70 Indian, 47 UK, 27 French and 11 German films. Box office concentration on a few titles continues to grow as 55% of the 2005 intake went to the year’s top 20 releases (as compared with 48% in 2004) and nine blockbusters grossed more than £20m (compared to seven films in 2004).

With an average of nine releases per week (in comparison to seven in 2002), competition for opening dates, screen and trailer time and editorial/review space is thus increasing, especially in the context of fast print turnaround (only 7% of all films released in 2005 continued to play more than seven weeks). However, according to the FDA, the UK market still retains some capacity for growth as the average UK per capita cinema-going rate was 2.8 visits in 2005.