Disney’s Avatar: The Way Of Water was the biggest film of 2022 at the French box office after just two weeks on release, garnering 6.7 million admissions in just two weeks. Serial (Bad) Weddings 3, released by UGC, was the top local title of the year with 2.4 million tickets sold.
Avatar: The Way Of Water quickly overtook the 6.6 million admissions of Paramount’s Top Gun: Maverick and was ahead of 2021’s biggest film Spider-Man: No Way Home, which had notched up 7.3 million admissions. It was also the strongest opening of the year with 2.2 million admissions in its first week in theatres.
It helped to propel the total French box office to a total of 152 million admissions for the year, a decrease of 26.9% on a pre-pandemic 2019, but in better shape than the beginning of the year.
2022 began with admissions down more than 40% in January and February compared to the pre-pandemic 2017-2019 average. Hope came during a week of school holidays mid-February, followed by a gradual improvement between March and June with a return to pre-Covid levels in June with just a 1.9% dip compared to the average for the same period.
Following an abysmal month of September with just 7.5m tickets sold, the lowest tickets sales for the month of September since 1980, French theatres showed signs of recovery in October (14.4 million admissions), November (14.8 million) and December (18 million) and finished the year on a strong footing.
“Atypical” year
French admissions had broken a 50-year record in 2019 with 213 million tickets sold. While the 2022 numbers are significantly less, they are reflective of what the CNC called an “atypical year” since national Covid restrictions that required full vaccination passes in order to enter cinemas in the country were lifted only in March and no concessions were sold in theatres for five weeks at the start of the year.
The top titles of the year were notably all Hollywood franchise films that took up the top 10 spots. It was the first time since 1989 that no French film had made it into the top 10.
Avatar: The Way Of Water (Disney) and Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount) were followed by Minions 2: Rise of Gru (Universal) with 3.9 million tickets sold, Jurassic World: Dominion (Universal) with 3.5 million, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Disney) with 3.4 million, Doctor Strange: In The Multiverse of Madness (Disney) with 3.4 million, The Batman (Warner Bros) with 3.0 million, Thor: Love And Thunder (Disney) with 2.9 million and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore (Warner Bros) with 2.8 million.
The CNC described the figures as “a very encouraging result in a still atypical context” and pointed out attendance has returned to nearly three-quarters of its pre-crisis level.
French films find local audiences
French films accounted for 62.2 million admissions in 2022, a market share of 40.9%, up slightly from 40.6% in 2021 and 37.2% on average from 2017-2019.
US films took a 40.5% market share, down from 43% in 2021 and a majority 54.1% in 2019. Just 68 US films were released in 2022, down from 78 in 2021 and much less than the average of 127 films per year from 2017-2019. Films from other countries accounted for 18.6% of total admissions, a significant jump compared to just 5.7% on average during the 2017-2019 period.
France’s own franchise film, Serial (Bad) Weddings 3, released by UGC, was the top local title of the year with 2.4 million tickets sold. The first Serial (bad) Weddings sold 12.4 million tickets during its 2014 release and its sequel sold 6.7 million tickets in 2019.
Cedric Jimenez’ thriller November (Studiocanal) followed with 2.4 million tickets, just up from Olivier Dahan’s Simone Veil portrait Simone: A Woman Of The Century (Warner Bros.) with more than 2.2 million tickets sold and still being shown in theatres at the beginning of 2023.
A handful of French-language indie titles managed to hold their own, namely Cedric Klapisch’s Rise (Studiocanal) with 1.3 million tickets sold, Cannes premieres Louis Garrel’s The Innocent (Ad Vitam) with nearly 700,000 admissions and Alice Winocour’s Paris Memories (Pathe) with 500,000.
In 2022, 30 films boasted more than one million ticket sales and 16 films sold more than two million tickets each. While the number of strong performers is higher than in 2020 and 2021, it is still much lower than pre-Covid, which saw 51 films on average garner more than one million admissions and 22 with more than two million.
Just two films crossed the milestone five million admissions mark in 2022: Avatar: The Way Of Water and Top Gun: Maverick.
Disney releases dominated the box office from Avatar: The Way of Water’s two-week takeover to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, which is notable since the studio had previously threatened to pull all of its releases from French theatres due to ongoing disputes over current windowing laws. Disney did not release Strange World in theatres and sent it straight to its Disney+ platform in the territory, but to date has not scrapped plans for future theatrical releases in France.
2023 line-up
Notable 2023 releases that could boost the box office include Pathé’s big-budget French titles Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom set for a February 1 release and two-part tentpole The Three Musketeers : D’Artagnan (April 5) and The Three Musketeers: Milady (December 13), plus US hopefuls including Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania (Feb 15, Disney), Super Mario Bros. (April 5, Universal), Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts (June 7, Paramount), Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1 (July 12, Paramount), Barbie (July 19, Warner Bros), Wonka (December 13, Warner Bros) and Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom (December 20, Warner Bros).
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