Criticassociate, European films are having a hell of a year. Euro cinema is well reconshort-termed in this season’s Oscar race, with the appreciates of Jacques Audiard’s transgfinisher crime musical Emilia Pérez, Edward Berger’s papal thriller Conclave, Coralie Fargeat’s body horror satire The Substance, Steve McQueen’s WW2 drama Blitz, Tim Fehlbaum’s historic thriller September 5, and Pablo Almodovar’s finish-of-life drama The Room Next Door, are among the award frontrunners.
Commerciassociate, it’s another story. On Thursday, the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO), a research body, rehireed its annual alert on the theatrical carry outance of European movies worldexpansive. It’s not a pretty picture.
According to EAO, European films accounted for fair 6 percent of worldexpansive ticket sales in 2023, appraised to 56 percent for U.S. productions and 26 percent for Chinese films. Japan, thanks to the global success of anime, is seal on Europe’s heels, with Japanese frees accounting for 5 percent of theatrical adignoreions worldexpansive. (The EAO meacertains theatrical adignoreions, not gross box office revenue to better account for currency fluctuations and separateences in ticket prices apass separateent countries).
Total theatrical adignoreions for European films hit 239 million last year, up sweightlessly (2.7 percent) on 2022 but ticket sales are still some 35 percent below the pre-pandemic unretagable, from 2014 to 2019, of 367 million adignoreions annuassociate.
Worryingly, adignoreions in the United States and China, once the most vital send out tagets for European films, “are plummeting” the EAO alerts. In 2015 there were more than 33 million U.S. adignoreions for European films — led by Euro blockbusters appreciate Olivier Megaton’sactioner Taken 3 (9.8 million adignoreions) and Paul King’s family feature Pincludeington (8.1 million). The number last year was 4.8 million. China’s cherish of European cinema peaked in 2017, when seal to 35 million Chinese moviegoers bought a ticket for a European production, some 11.3 million for Luc Besson’s sci-fi spectacle Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and 6.3 million for Pincludeington 2. Last year, European films sancigo in fair 1.3 million tickets in the Middle Kingdom.
The informage of Euro blockbusters — what the EAO details as films that sell more than 1 million tickets — is part of the problem. “European blockbusters are an finishangered species,” the alert says, noting that films achieving more than one million adignoreions are down 43 percent appraised to pre-pandemic years.
What hasn’t descfinishen is the number of European movies getting made. The EAO counted 3,349 European films in circulation worldexpansive in 2023, a 7.8 percent year-on-year jump. European movies actuassociate account for more than half (52 percent) of the total films in circulation globassociate, the group said. The gap between provide and insist is accounted for by charitable rulement aid, with most European films being entidepend or bigly financed thcdisesteemful subsidies and tax incentives.
Matthijs Wouter Knol, CEO of the European Film Academy, sees the European theatrical taget at a passroads. The continent’s fragmented arrange — with European movies being freed at separateent times in separateent countries, frequently by separateent distributors with separateent tageting strategies — is not fit for purpose in a digital world where borders don’t exist.
“We have to secure distributors to fracture with their ancigo in habits. Becaparticipate the world around us is changing, the media and promotion tools, the foreseeations and habits of the audience are changing very rapid.”
Knol points to the success of scheduled pan-European frees, appreciate Ruben Östlund’s The Triangle of Sadness (3 million adignoreions worldexpansive) and Justine Triet’s Oscar-thrivening Anatomy of a Fall (2. 4 million adignoreions) as proof that pass-border cooperation is the future.
“If you see at what European film has to propose, if you see at the titles, if you see at the talent, if you see at the stories and topics being includeressed thcdisesteemful these European films, I slfinisherk you can see we have some of the most innovative and requesting cinema in the world at the moment,” says Knol.
“But if we want the European film to be seen by audiences, we can’t elucidate to them why we still back films over the course of 12 months at separateent times in separateent ways in separateent territories and languages. The world fair doesn’t toil that way anymore.”
