UK cinemas v Covid-19

In the battle between UK cinemas and a contagious, potentially lethal virus, there could only ever be one winner. Even before Prime Minister Boris Johnson essentially instructed the British public to stay away from large gatherings (which implicitly includes cinemas), admissions were already beginning to show a dramatic decline.

For the latest weekend period (March 13-15), total UK and Ireland cinema box office fell by 45 per cent from the previous weekend, and was also down 53 per cent from the equivalent session from 2019. After a January and February when box office rose 19 per cent on the same months of 2019, buoyed by hits including 1917, March is suddenly looking like a period in which all the gains this year will be wiped out.

Even more alarming for cinema operators is the fact that declining box office revenues cannot be attributed to the recently announced postponement of key titles from the release calendar (see below). The major films long ago positioned for UK release on March 13 – including The Hunt, Bloodshot, My Spy and Misbehaviour – all did in fact come out in cinemas as planned.

The numbers – how bad is it?

Whether for films already on release or the ones newly arrived in cinemas, the numbers tell a story of woe. With just three exceptions, every film in the top 50 fell by at least 50 per cent from the previous weekend. Pixar’s Onward leads the chart with £1.27m, but the film’s 11-day total of £5.29m is at the very low end for the Disney-owned animation studio. Only Cars 3 (£5.07m after two weekends of play) and The Good Dinosaur (£5.12m) did worse for Pixar.