After a challenging period for theatrical documentaries, a growing number of titles are finding significant audiences at the UK-Ireland box office in 2025.
Altitude’s Ocean With David Attenborough hit the £1.6m mark as of June 16. Further encouraging performers are Modern Films and Breakout Pictures’ Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story, which is on £300,000 (released in Ireland on January 31 and UK on April 18), a record for an independent Irish documentary at the UK-Ireland box office, plus Dogwoof’s One To One: John & Yoko, which has brought in £295,398 since its April 9 release.
While these films may not quite be hitting the glory days of Amy’s £3.5m for Altitude in 2015 and Free Solo’s £2.1m for Dogwoof in 2018, positive strides are being made from a couple of years ago, when many docs with festival acclaim were struggling to make it past the £40,000 mark.
“We’ve seen a new appreciation of going to the actual cinema to see docs. Two years ago, it didn’t feel like that. You were much more cautious of taking on docs,” says Nell Roddy, co-founder of Irish distributor Breakout Pictures. “They still need to feel very theatrical, not that it’s just going to be on Netflix or TV.”
“We’re optimistic,” notes Bryony Forde, theatrical sales director at Altitude. “But we’re still very conscious that documentaries can be hard to make work for theatrical.”
Making waves
Attenborough is a well-known, beloved figure who appeals to a wide-reaching audience; however, he is also a figure whom audiences are very used to seeing on TV.
“We always knew we wanted to position it as a film,” says Kenji Lloyd, head of marketing at Altitude. “It’s something that needs to be seen on the big screen. Everything from the shot selection, the artwork, social media campaign, was all about this being a [cinematic] film, and it’s David’s most powerful message yet – stressing the urgency, and that being a point of difference.”
The film, directed by Colin Butfield, Toby Nowlan and Keith Scholey, opened at 580 sites – the widest ever for a documentary in UK-Ireland. It brought in £573,551 at the UK-Ireland box office after its first weekend.
Altitude says it is the highest-grossing opening for a nature documentary on record and the highest documentary opening of this decade in the UK and Ireland. (The figure does include takings from Thursday, May 8, with the film initially launching as an event release with further encore screenings on Sunday, May 11. Off the back of the successful opening weekend, cinemas scheduled more regular screenings.)
Ocean With David Attenborough features never-before-seen footage of bottom trawling and its devastating effects on the ocean. Cinemagoers were also treated to an added 10-minute behind-the-scenes documentary, exclusive to the cinema release.
Releasing the film on Attenborough’s 99th birthday, and turning its opening into a global cinema event, added to the sense of occasion. The film was released on May 8 in 27 countries worldwide, with Piece of Magic leading the international rollout. Further global events that have helped to keep the film in public consciousness have included World Ocean Day on June 8 and the UN Ocean Conference, which started on June 9.
Altitude worked alongside non-profits such as the Blue Marine Foundation and Pristine Seas, as well as influencers close to the cause, to get the film’s message out, while cinemas were encouraged to connect with local environmental groups to further spread the film’s message.
Bristol, a city with an established environmentally conscious community, has the top two-performing sites for the film in the territory – Watershed and Everyman. Other top-performing sites are in Bournemouth, Plymouth and Edinburgh.
The biggest marketing spend was on digital and radio adverts. “It’s uncommon these days for a documentary to do anything beyond digital [adverts], but we saw the potential, we know how iconic David’s voice is, and so we thought that kind of radio campaign was going to be beneficial to us in terms of reaching a slightly older audience,” notes Lloyd.
“My dream would be the official Tom Waits documentary”
While documentaries about celebrities are popular on the US streaming platforms, films about revered, slighly unknowable figures with fervent fanbases are playing well in cinemas.
“The dream scenario with a doc is a well-known subject with mystery. My dream documentary would be the official Tom Waits documentary, because no one knows who he really is,” says Tom Howson, head of theatrical sales at Dogwoof. “There’s a sweet spot in that sort of familiarity, but with a bit of a gap in the knowledge.”
Howson believes Dogwoof found this in UK photographer Martin Parr, the subject of Lee Shulman’s I Am Martin Parr, which has brought in £155,761 since February 21. “He’s a fairly ubiquitous presence in terms of art and photography, but we only really know his work rather than his character,” notes Howson of Parr.
“We engineered a marketing strategy that was creative first. We heroed and celebrated Martin’s photos, his kookiness, his status as a local English hero,” notes Droo Padhiar, Dogwoof’s head of marketing and communications. “Outreach and partnerships were key to this one – we had the support of the Martin Parr foundation, and several other photography institutions and partners who we worked with closely.”
I Am Martin Parr performed strongest in Bristol and the surrounding area, where Parr lives and the Martin Parr foundation is based.
Dogwoof made the decision to create original artwork itself rather than use the international sales artwork. “That single image alone made a huge difference to that release,” says Howson, who describes the marketing budget as “modest”.
A novel approach
Similar can be said for Sinéad O’Shea’s Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story. In Ireland particularly, Edna O’Brien is a well-known, but not overly exposed, literary figure. “We all knew Edna O’Brien, but not the real Edna O’Brien. This was a very different approach to who she was,” says Breakout’s Roddy.
“The fact that she’s giving her final interviews, she knows she’s going to pass, and reflecting on life – the whole thing feels theatrical,” adds Robert McCann Finn, co-founder with Roddy of Breakout.
They believed an older generation of Irish women would be interested in a film about O’Brien. It harnessed that audience with a grassroots campaign, collaborating with libraries, book clubs and independent bookshops, sending them bookmarks printed with O’Brien quotes, plus art centres and theatres.
The distributor was also keen to bring O’Brien to a new generation. “She was always a maverick, and there was always this kind of respect for her,” observes McCann Finn. “One thing we did was get quotes from her book on mirrors in bathrooms in different cinemas, and young women were taking pictures of themselves with the quote in and posting it on Instagram.”
The film has reached £170,000 in Ireland, where Breakout led the release, and £130,000 in the UK, where Modern Films has spearheaded distribution. The two companies have shared marketing materials, tailoring them slightly to each country.
“The visibility of Sinead, the director, was helpful. She’ll go to the Q&As, she’s very vocal online about her film. She’ll assist in the distribution process as much as possible,” says Roddy.
Model behaviour
Sadie Frost’s Twiggy aimed to capitalise on being the first official documentary on the iconic UK model and has grossed close to £180,000 for Studio Soho Distribution in the UK-Ireland following its March 7 release. Studio Soho knew the model’s fan base would turn out and focused its marketing on less obvious Twiggy fans.
“We did most of our work trying to reach people who are adjacent,” says Jordan Pletts, Studio Soho’s campaigns manager. “We tried to reach a younger audience by targeting people interested in vintage clothing and fashion.”
Studio Soho scheduled the film’s release to be right after London Fashion Week to lean into the fashion crowd and hosted its first preview screenings at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. The film performed strongest in London venues, Depot Lewes and Showroom in Sheffield, which the distributor had targeted with Q&As.
Behind the curtain
For One To One: John & Yoko the subjects were far from mysterious to audiences. “It’s a film about a well-known subject. The challenge was to pitch it as part of the story you’ve not seen before and don’t know so well,” says Dogwoof’s Howson.
Dogwoof focused on outdoor and social media spend on key music environments, such as Spotify podcasts, and print, to get this message across.
“Outreach was very much a second priority,” adds Padhiar. “We did approach several Beatles, John Lennon and Yoko Ono fan groups, but the support of the official Lennon, Ono and Abbey Road social media accounts is where the activity landed in the most meaningful way.”
One To One, Howson notes, performed particularly well in Scotland, possibly in part due to the film’s director, Kevin Macdonald, being Scottish. “We’re often finding Scotland is a bit of a stronghold for [documentary] theatrical box office. Glasgow Film Theatre, the Cameo, hopefully now the Filmhouse reopening, we’ll see that continue. We saw [Scotland] over-index on where we thought it would be.
“The cinemas there are good, they’ve got good audiences, especially in Glasgow Film Theatre, which works brilliantly for us on most things.”
Imax also pulled in audiences for One To One, but its run was cut short. “With the patchwork nature of the Imax calendar, it can be difficult for indie distributors to get onto those screens,” notes Howson. “Something else comes in and wipes you. Studios have no wiggle room at all and Imax works on exclusivity, so as soon as Sinners came out, no one else was allowed to screen on Imax.”
Telling the story
Getting in early on a project has proven particularly helpful for some distributors. Studio Soho produced Twiggy as well as distributing it and Breakout came on board as Blue Road’s distributor before the film had shot, having previously worked with the director on Pray For Our Sinners.
“We’re finding it’s helpful to be involved early – we can help shape the publicity or marketing journey from an earlier stage,” says McCann Finn.
Distributors are keen to keep the 2025 theatrical momentum building for fan-favourite docs. Dartmouth Films’ Eric Ravilious: Drawn To War is an earlier testament to this. It follows the British landscape artist who died in a plane crash in 1942, and grossed £327,000 in the particularly challenging theatrical landscape of 2022.
“Docs with inbuilt audiences remain key for the UK – your work is already 30% done, then it’s about engagement and amplification, and that USP [unique selling point] and mystery and what hasn’t been told before,” says Padhiar.
But that doesn’t mean Dogwoof is going to shift its focus purely towards documentaries about popular culture figures. Howson stresses the likes of West Bank-set No Other Land and 2000 Metres To Andriivka, which follows Ukrainian troops to liberate a Russian-occupied village, remain key to what the company does.
“With the more difficult documentaries, from a distribution point of view, it’s important to give them space to breathe and find their own way in the marketplace. No Other Land has proved to be a huge critical success, and a commercial success [with a UK-Ireland box office over £130,000], but it took many months to get there.”
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