This week Neil Calloway casts a critical eye over the latest British box office statistics…
On Friday the BFI released the statistics for 2015 at the UK box office. The headlines that came with it showed that it was a record year at the box office in the UK and Ireland (similarly to the way the US and Canada are one entity when it comes to box office, the UK and Ireland are put together).
In short, 171.9 million trips to the cinema were made in Britain and Ireland last year, up 9% on 2014, with ticket sales of £1,240 million, a 17% increase on the previous year. 34% of films released in the UK qualified as British, the highest since records began (though records only began in 2001), which seems like a good amount for a country whose cinemas are usually dominated by Hollywood, but when you realise that it includes almost any film with the slightest connection to Britain it is a less impressive statistic.
Of the top twenty British films at the UK box office – there are only two (Shaun The Sheep and Suffragette) that are are solely UK productions; the rest being co-productions between British companies and ones from other countries (largely the US, it must be said). Bizarrely, even The Lady In The Van – a film written by Alan Bennett, directed by Nicholas Hytner and starring Dame Maggie Smith – is a US/UK co-production, as is the none more American Terminator Genisys.
The number one British film – or film that qualifies as British at the UK box office last year was Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It was certainly shot over here, much of the cast is British, and the crew would be too, but nobody – despite an ad campaign from the British government – would claim it was truly British. Jakku isn’t just outside Sheffield. Maz Kanata doesn’t live in Gloucestershire. Spectre – which is unarguably British film, was number 2 at the UK box office, with Avengers: Age of Ultron as the third biggest “British” film of last year.
In Independent British Film scene seems a little more home grown, with four UK only productions in the top ten, and the UK/US/French co-production Legend taking the top spot. You might argue that a film written and directed by an American with Norwegian heritage isn’t wholly British, but it tells a British story, with a British cast, and was produced by Working Title, a British production company (albeit one owned by Universal Studios). Another US/UK co-production –The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel comes in second place. Shaun The Sheep in third place was the highest grossing solely British indie movie of last year.
201 films went into production in Britain last year, spending £1,410 million, slightly down on 2014 (when The Force Awakens was shooting in the UK), but still the second highest figure since they started recording this statistic in 1994. Independent production was significantly down on 2014, with £316 million spent last year as opposed to £430 million the previous year. Production on 82 “high end” TV shows (ones that cost more than £1 million per broadcast hour) started in 2015, spending £759 million, up from the £633 million spent in 2014. Either Game of Thrones, shot in Northern Ireland, convinced them to produce their shows in the UK, or they did it because they can now receive a tax rebate of up to 25% of the budget spent in the UK.
These figures are always worth looking at, because behind the spin and the record years, it shows that Britain, alone, doesn’t really make that many films. Britain is lucky in that it shares a language with the most dominant film industry in the world, has first rate technicians and visual effects teams, and large studio complexes just outside London, but this should allow us to think we have our own film industry.
The full BFI statistics for 2015 can be found here.
Neil Calloway is a pub quiz extraordinaire and Top Gun obsessive. Check back here every Sunday for future instalments.
Originally published January 31, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
