Cinemas in November were once again packed to the rafters as a superb slate of crowd-pleasing titles saw UK and Ireland box office reach levels almost twice those for the same period in 2023.
In total, latest figures from Comscore Movies confirm, ticket sales reached over £145 million, an incredible 95 per cent up on the same month last year. [UPDATE – figures just published by the Cinema Advertising Association confirm that admissions, at 13.24 million, were 78 per cent up].
Titles as diverse as Wicked, Paddington in Peru, Gladiator II and Moana 2 drew in the most diverse audiences imaginable, with no sign of those films losing steam as the month closed. Wicked in particular set the box office alight, making over £32 million in just its first nine days on release.
All in all, this titles and others released during the month saw total box office close the gap on the same point in 2023, reducing the deficit from 10 to just 2 per cent, and that in a year the first half of which was blighted by the impacts of the writers’ and actors’ strikes in the US.
With strong titles such as Kraven the Hunter, Mufasa: the Lion King, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and many others still to come, there’s every hope that – despite the challenges – 2024 will see the sector take a small but important further step on the road to recovery.