As I write this, we’re in turbulent times due to the outbreak of COVID-19.  It’s far from clear what the outcome will be on the overall film economy, but already we can see one area which is being hit hard – cinemas.

A mix of fear of infection and government mandates mean that projector lights are going out all over Europe and beyond.

In the short-term, the situation looks pretty bleak for many high street cinema chains.  They hold masses of perishable concessions, have rent owing and a workforce to pay or let go (both in the sites and back-offices).

However, once the current crisis is over it seems reasonable to assume that cinema-going will pick back up, fuelled by a desire to …

Industry watchers (and regular readers) will know that there is an increasing concern in the film business about the declining cinema attendance among young people.  Teenagers and young adults have always formed the biggest group of cinema attendees and yet we have seen a decline in many countries in the current decade.

Last week, I ran a symposium for senior industry figures in UK cinema, supported by Into Film.  In attendance were representatives from the biggest cinema chains, distributors, public bodies, industry bodies and some big names from film production.  The event was a private forum for executives to share their experiences, ideas and solutions with the aim of increasing cinema attendance among young people.  (Note: We observed the Chatham House …

Last week, I was chatting with a cinema owner who was angrily complaining about Martin Scorsese’s new movie, The Irishman.

The movie has proved controversial on a number of fronts:

• It has a very short ‘release window’, thanks to it being entirely funded by Netflix.  This means that it will available to stream only 19 days after it first appeared in cinemas.  This has caused much consternation in the exhibition sector, leading to major chains refusing to screen it.
• Scorsese has made some comments about his dislike for Marvel movies, referring to them as “not cinema” and describing them as “theme parks”.
• It is a very long movie, coming in at three and a half hours.  This means that it is longer than 99.8% …

For many independent filmmakers, whether or not their film reaches the big screen means everything.  No matter the money to be made via television deals or the massive audiences possible with VOD, a theatrical release is where it’s at.

In a new piece of research for the American Film Market, Bruce Nash and I set out to discover how many films actually make it to cinemas.

We built a dataset of all United States-produced narrative (non-documentary) feature films which were shot in 2017 and looked at their distribution outcome.

Before we get into the details, we need to be a little bit careful about our definition of a “theatrical release”. For example, it isn’t really fair to compare a …

In the last few weeks, there has been a resurgence of news articles about movie flops (sometimes called ‘box office bombs’).  These have been sparked by recent under-performing releases such as London Fields, Robin Hood and The Nutcracker and the Four Realms and fueled by the public’s Schadenfreude at watching big movies fail.

A few readers have asked me about the wider trends behind flops, so I thought I’d turn to the data to have a look.

The very first thing to say on the topic is that whether a movie has flopped is often a subjective judgement.  A small number of releases will have failed by everyone’s measurement but many box office disappointments will only be regarded as flops by some …