Gower Street CEO Dimitrios Mitsinikos was invited to discuss our industry recovery research at this year’s UK Distributor Slate Days event. Dimitrios and Lucy Jones, executive director, UK & Ireland at, our partners, Comscore Movies took part in the event’s Live Lounge session on Wednesday (Sept. 23).
Hosted by journalist Charles Gant, the presentation was titled “Box office trends and outlook 2020 and 2021”. Screendaily have also written up coverage of the session.
Kicking off the presentation, Lucy explained that the UK/Ireland market was down 69% year-on-year after 37 weeks of play with £294 million in ticket sales, but had started to see some recovery acceleration in the past three weeks. Lucy also talked about the impact of TENET and the success of AFTER WE COLLIDED, highlighting the Guardian article which featured our senior box office analyst Delphine Lievens, as well as showcasing the proportion of cinemas open in each region of the UK/Ireland market.
Dimitrios presented the latest set of Growth Trackers for UK/Ireland from Gower Street’s Road To Recovery reports, alongside our global regional Growth Trackers (see below).
Dimitrios explained the methodology behind our Blueprint To Recovery.
He then went on to show where we currently anticipate key box office targets to be achieved for UK/Ireland (see first graph, below) and our current end of year estimate, which stands at £540 million with admissions falling back to a level not seen since the 1980s.
He also looked ahead to a more positive picture in 2021 (see second graph, below). He pointed out that 2021 is currently very front-loaded, with Q1, Q2 and Q3 maybe a little too full. Our current 2021 full-year estimate is £980 million (-27% vs 2019).
Looking even further to 2022, Dimitrios predicted a period of inevitable and profitable industry change following the current crisis, based on historic patterns.
“What keeps me optimistic about our industry is that people have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to come back to the cinemas,” said Dimitrios, ending the presentation on a positive note.
Slate Days is an annual UK industry event, jointly presented by Film Hub London, Film Hub Scotland and the BFI Film Audience Network, which promotes stronger links between distribution and exhibition. Over two days it showcases a range of exciting upcoming theatrical releases, allowing exhibitors to start developing their future programming. It also lets exhibitors and distributors from across the UK to connect. This year’s event, which took place online, featured presentations from 14 UK distributors.
