Avengers Endgame has been a huge commercial success, smashing multiple box office records. It became the 17th highest grossing film of all time, after just five days.
Far from a lone success story, this is just one example of an industry in rude health with successes in multiple genres. IT (2017) is the biggest box office horror film of all time, Frozen (2013) the biggest family release of all time, and Deadpool 2 (2018) is the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time.
While streaming is changing the entertainment business, its effect on cinema is seemingly non-existent. You could infer the two have little causality on the other: people still want to view films on the big screen.
Cinema’s growth can be put down to multiple reasons. Firstly, franchises are going from strength-to-strength with Marvel Cinematic Universe, for instance, building a mixture of hardcore and casual fans. Driven by hype and word-of-mouth, blockbuster releases become events in their own right; specialist event cinema such as Rooftop Cinema & Secret Cinema also benefiting from the growing ‘experience economy’.
Many are unprepared to wait for home releases in fear of missing out, while fear of spoilers is thought to be behind 19 of the top 20 biggest all-time opening weekends happening in this decade.
Finally, it is worth mentioning the increase in both the quantity and quality of UK cinemas. There are more chains catering for affluent audiences (Everyman & Curzon), while events such as baby-friendly screenings & theatre showings are bringing wider audiences into multiplexes.
Cinema has always been seen as an effective way to add incremental reach onto TV campaigns. But the channel offers advertisers more versatility and as admissions grow and franchise blockbusters become more commonplace, cinema will gain greater prominence in the advertising mix.
