UK-Ireland box office up 18% in September compared to previous year boosted by ‘The Conjuring 4’, ‘Downton Abbey 3’

UK-Ireland box office takings in September 2025 were up 18% on the previous year, as the year-to-date recovered from a slow August and runs 9% ahead of 2024.

Total revenue for September 2025 was just over £71m, 18% up on the £60.3m of September 2024.

The release of one high-grossing title last year – Beetlejuice Beetlejuice with £21.6m – was trumped by two decent figures this year. Warner Bros’ horror The Conjuring: Last Rites became comfortably the highest-grossing in the nine-film Conjuring universe with £16.8m; and Universal’s Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale took £14.7m.

A broad range of genres then supplemented these figures, including Sony anime Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba Infinity Castle with £6.4m, Disney’s UK-US comedy The Roses with £5.7m, and Warner Bros’ Paul Thomas Anderson drama One Battle After Another with £4m.

It was a decent month for UK films, with three titles from the territory in the top 10, grossing a total of £21.6m - The Grand Finale, The Roses and filmed theatre performance Inter Alia starring Rosamund Pike from NT Live (£1.2m in the month).

The year-to-date is up to £806.4m, running 9% ahead of £736.9m at the same stage in 2024, and just 1% behind 2023.

The figures are a positive sign for UK-Ireland exhibition, which had a good first half to the year, but was down 21% year-on-year in August.

October sees a combination of awards titles, event releases, and a slew of horror films in the build-up to Halloween.

Despite only playing for three days from October 3-5, music documentary Taylor Swift / The Official Release Party Of A Showgirl could still end the month as a top-grossing title, with cinemas reporting advance sales ahead of Swift’s The Eras Tour film. Vue CEO Tim Richards said today (Friday 3) that the exhibitor has sold over 50,000 advance tickets for the screenings, including 80 sold-out sessions.

With many of the year’s major film festivals now done, the awards titles birthed from them are now moving into cinemas. Entertainment Film Distributors has Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine from October 3; while Sony has Luca Guadagnino’s cancel culture-themed thriller After The Hunt from October 17.

Later in the month are Bruce Springsteen biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere through Disney on October 24; and Bugonia, the new film from The Favourite and Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos, on October 31.

Horror will hold significant space as usual, with titles including Good Boy (Vertigo, October 10), Night Of The Zoopocalypse (Kazoo, October 10), The Black Phone 2 (Universal, October 17) and Shelby Oaks (Altitude, October 31).

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