UK box office crossed £1bn mark for third consecutive year in 2011, 3D receipts down 5.9%.

UK box office was up 4.5% year-on-year in 2011 at £1.129bn according to figures from Rentrak EDI.

The UK box office crossed the £1bn mark for the third consecutive year. The 4.5% improvement is the third biggest improvement in the last five years. July was again the most lucrative month on £151.7m.

However, 3D revenues accounted for £245m, or 21.56% of the box office, which is a 5.9% year-on-year decline.

The UK accounted for 20.8% of the European box office, up 0.7% on 2010. The territory’s top five titles were Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (£73.1m), The King’s Speech (£45.7m), The Inbetweeners Movie (£45m), Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (£32.9m) and The Hangover Part II (£32.8m).

Warner Bros claimed the largest distributor marketshare in 2011 with £208.3m or 18.44%, a marginal improvement on its 2010 top marketshare of 18.35%. With £73.1m of receipts Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 accounted for 35% of the distributor’s total box office.

Paramount replaced Fox in second place on £183.2m (16.2%) marketshare, while Universal posted the biggest year-on-year improvement among the majors in third on £113.8m.

Fox slipped to fourth from second on £125.3m while Disney was the biggest faller, dropping from 14.3% marketshare in 2010 to 8.7% in 2011. Sony once again came in sixth, posting total receipts of £83.1m.

Entertainment Film Distributors was the best of the rest, grossing £76.4m from 22 films, with summer smash The Inbetweeners Movie accounting for 59% of their total.

eOne had the eighth biggest box office on £57m from only 11 films, followed by Momentum on £52.9m from 13 films (The King’s Speech accounted for 85% of the company’s box office), StudioCanal made £43.8m from 42 films and Lionsgate tallied the 11th best results on £15.9m from 16 films.

Among the studios Universal released the most films with 34, followed by Fox on 31 and then Warner Bros and Paramount who both had 30. StudioCanal was the most prolific UK distributor releasing 42 films.

The data in this article refers the to 52-week period Jan 7 2011 to Jan 5 2012. NB 2010 was a 53-week year.

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