Box office and admissions figures released this week show that the UK cinema sector continued to perform strongly during 2012, despite the twin challenges of continuing economic uncertainty and a packed sporting Summer.
Total box office for UK in 2012 was £1,099,095,773, a figure 5.9 per cent up on that for 2011. UK admissions reached 172,498,775, representing a 0.5 per cent increase on the previous year.
This strong performance continued despite ongoing pressure on household incomes and the fact that the Summer months saw not just the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, but also the European Football Championships and the Diamond Jubilee.
As might be expected, leading the charge was Skyfall, now the best-performing film ever at the UK box ffice, and the first to break the £100 million mark in ticket sales. But – as can be seen from the top ten films below – there was strong support from a number of other movies, most notably The Dark Knight Rises and Avengers Assemble both of which themselves topped £50 million:
Top ten films at UK and Ireland box office 2012
- Skyfall (Sony Pictures): £101.0
- The Dark Knight Rises (Warner Bros): £56.3m
- Marvel’s Avengers Assemble (Walt Disney): £51.9m
- The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Warner Bros): £40.8m
- The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (eOne Films): £35.5m
- Ted (Universal Pictures): £30.3m
- Ice Age: Continental Drift (20th Century Fox): £30.1m
- The Amazing Spider-Man (Sony Pictures): £25.9m
- Prometheus (20th Century Fox): £24.7m
- The Hunger Games (Lionsgate): £23.8m
While not scaling the heights of 2011, when The King’s Speech and The Inbetweeners Movie were to the fore, 2012 proved another good year for British film, with Skyfall receiving strong support from The Woman in Black and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel:
Top ten British films at UK and Ireland box office 2012
- Skyfall (Sony Pictures): £101.0m
- The Woman In Black (Momentum): £21.2m
- The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (20th Century Fox): £20.3m
- The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists (Sony Pictures): £16.7m
- The Iron Lady (20th Century Fox): £9.6m
- Nativity 2: Danger In The Manger! (eOne Films): £9.1m
- Salmon Fishing In The Yemen (Lionsgate): £6.0m
- Anna Karenina (Universal Pictures): £5.5m
- The Sweeney (eOne Films): £4.5m
- Dredd (Entertainment): £4.4m
With the release of Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables very early in the year, British film agains looks like it will be a strong feature of 2013 box office.