Dutch cinema admissions up 0.8%

Dutch cinema admissions rose 0.8% during 2013 according to the latest figures announced by Wilco Wolfers, president of the Dutch Federation for Cinematography and the Dutch Association of Film Distributors.

In total, 30.8m people attended Dutch cinemas throughout the year (up on 2012’s 30.6m), with box office receipts totalling $339.5m (€249.4m) at an average ticket price of €8.10.

The best performer of 2013 was The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug with $11m (€8.1m), while the best local performer was Johan Nijenhuis’s romantic comedy Loving Ibiza with $7.9m (€5.8m) putting it fourth overall on the yearly list.

Overall, Dutch films enjoyed a 20.5% market share, up on 2012’s 14.18%, with nearly 6.3m people watching Dutch films during the year. Mainstream and family-orientated films performed strongest, while local art house films struggled to find an audience.

In 2013, the cinema and film distribution industries offered $2.7m (€2m) in financial support to producers of Dutch films through the Abraham Tuschinski Fund, with this year seeing that figure rise to $2.9m (€2.1m).

The year also saw an increase in cinema capacity by more than 3,000 seats to 137,000 with occupancy rate (the number of times that seat is sold in a year) falling. Art house and cinema clubs saw a 1.5% fall in attendance, predominantly due to the huge success of Intouchables in 2012.