Substantially the same as last year, with a return to pre-Covid numbers and a rise in younger audiences: these are the salient points emerging from the Cinetel report on the performance of the film market in Italy in 2024 (based on a sample of 1,305 cinemas and 3,532 screens), which was presented in Rome yesterday. Over the past year, the Italian box office took a total of 493,977,853 euros, with 69,709,089 tickets sold. It’s a result in line with the previous year (-0.4% in revenue; -1.3% admissions), which was helped by the summer season which proved to be the best June-August trimester in box office history in terms of revenue (up 0.2% on the previous record set in 2023), and by the tail-end of the Christmas period, which recorded an approximate rise of 28% on 2023 (with a quota of 45% Italian films).

Box office data presented for Italian productions (including co-productions) was also in line with 2023, with this category accounting for 24.6% of total earnings (versus 24.3% in 2023) and 25.7% of admissions (versus 25.9% in 2023); in other words, higher numbers than the average recorded during the 2017-2019 period (20.6% of earnings and 21% of admissions). American cinema dominated the market, with earnings accounting for 54.2% of the total share and admissions at 52.3%. The biggest earner of the year was Inside Out 2 (€46.5 million; 6.4 million admissions) while the national production boasting the best box office result was The Boy with Pink Pants [+lire aussi :
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943 new titles enjoying their first ever screenings were distributed in cinemas in 2024 (166 more than in 2023), 431 of which were Italian productions or co-productions (67 more than in 2023) and 512 of which were international productions (99 more than in 2023); 288 of these new titles were documentaries. In addition to newly released films, another 673 movies were also distributed in cinemas (event films, re-releases, short films; 213 more than in 2023), earning €19.9 million (4% of the market’s box office total, versus 2.8% in 2023) and boasting 2.5 million admissions (3.6% of the overall total, versus 2.2% in 2023).

On the heels of American cinema, which earned €267,926,630, was Italian film, which took €121,404,986, following by British cinema (€57.8 million, with a market share of 11.7%;), Japanese production (€17.9 million, with a market share of 3.6%) and French film (€9.9 million, with a market share of 2%).

Among the various venues, single-screen cinemas (accounting for 636 screens) recorded the best improvement on 2023 (a 10.2% rise in revenue and 11.6% more admissions). As for the profile of cinemagoers in 2024, 47% were women and 53% were men. Surprisingly, the most highly represented age group was 15-24-year-olds (25%), following by the 35-49 (19%), 3-14 (18%) and 25-34 (16%) segments. The 50-59 age group came in at 12%, while the over sixties accounted for 10% of the total.