The French box office bounced back in October with a total of 14.3m million admissions, the highest monthly ticket sales of 2022 to date, according to CNC figures.
Admissions nearly doubled from September’s figures, a 20.7% dip from 2021 to 7.4 million, the lowest of the year and the worst September at the box office for the country since 1980.
However, although October 2022 admissions were just 0.1% down on October 2021, this was still 24% lower than the 2017-2019 average for the month.
Year-to-date, French theatres totaled 118.93 million admissions, down 30.3% from the same period in 2019 and down 28.7% from the 2017-2019 average.
November drives October
Studiocanal’s November dominated October. Cedric Jimenez’s thriller about Paris’ devastating Bataclan terrorist attacks has garnered more than 1.7m admissions since its October 5 release. Warner Bros’ Black Adam followed with more than a 1m tickets sold as of the end of the month. The Dwayne Johnson superhero title took the top spot on its second week on release, and has sold 1.4 million tickets to date since its October 19 release. Another Warner Bros title, Olivier Dahan’s Simone Veil biopic Simone, A Woman Of The Century, also attracted notable audiences passing the totemic 1m admissions mark to sell more than 1.2 million tickets to date.
Arthouse films also performed well, particularly Louis Garrel’s comedy drama L’Innocent, distributed by Ad Vitam. The Cannes premiere lured nearly 500,000 viewers for the month. Rebecca Zlotowski’s Venice title Other People’s Children sold 230,000 tickets in October, also via Ad Vitam, following its September launch and has now sold more than 373,000 tickets to date.
Other strong performers include Bac Film’s feature animaion Little Nicholas: Happy As Can Be with more than 200,000 admissions, Memento Distribution’s Boy From Heaven, directed by Tarik Saleh, with more than 150,000 and The Jokers’ Films’ The Origin Of Evil with more than 120,000.
Fifty-one new films were released in October in France, less than the 69 released in October 2019. The market share for French films is estimated at 40.6% over the first 10 months of the year and 36.8% for US titles.
The objective targeted by a large part of the industry is to hit 150 million admissions by the end of 2022. From January to October, nearly 119 million people have gone to the cinema, marking a 28.7% dip compared to the 2017-2019 average. The industry is taking more proactive action to woo cinemagoers back to theatres with the launch of a marketing campaign spearheaded by exhibitors’ association FNCF, the CNC and other industry unions titled: ‘We all have a good reason to go to the movies.’ The groups launched a short film ad depicting audiences of all ages flocking to theatres and a social media campaign urging both professionals and audiences to share #MaBonneRaison or #MyGoodReason to return to cinemas.
No comments yet