This week Neil Calloway looks at the recently released figures for UK film in 2014…
This week the BFI research and statistics unit released figures for the UK box office in 2014. The good news is that it was a record year for UK films in 2014. The bad news is that UK cinema admissions were down 5% on 2013, and ticket sales were down 2% on 2013.
How, then can it be a record year? Because investment in films in Britain reached record levels. This boils down to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the new Mission: Impossible film and the sequel to 2010’s Alice in Wonderland being shot over here. Britain has three big draws for big Hollywood studios making films here; big soundstages – Pinewood, Shepperton and Leavesden – all a short distance from London, our crews speak the same language as Americans, and most importantly, our tax breaks for films made in Britain. American studios might be investing in films being made over here, but when those films make money, the profits aren’t going to stay here. The technicians at Pinewood aren’t on a percentage of the profits from The Force Awakens. It’s great that these films are being made over here, but let’s not pretend they are part of the British film industry. At best, we are the entertainment industry version of a factory in China making electronic goods for export cheaper than can be done in the west.
The biggest film at the box office inn the UK was The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, the only film to make more than £40 million in Britain (three films – Despicable Me 2, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and Les Misérables – broke the £40 at the British box office in 2013). I was actually surprised that the BFI didn’t claim The Hobbit as British; it might have been shot in New Zealand and financed by a US studio, but the cast is overwhelmingly English, as is the source material. Surely we can claim Bilbo Baggins as our own?
Another record was broken in the independent sector. UK independent films had their highest ever market share – 15.5% – of the box office since records began (which to be fair is only in 2001), more than 5% higher than the market share for British films backed by US studios. So that is something to shout about, until you look at the films involved. The highest grossing British independent film was Paddington. This isn’t some small, plucky film about life on the edge in Hackney made by for a handful of cash, but the most expensive film ever produced by StudioCanal (a French company!), starring Nicole Kidman and based on a well loved book series that is almost sixty years old. The second highest grossing British indie was The Inbetweeners 2. I liked it, in a “not as good as the first film, not as good as the series” kind of way, but Film4 is probably the nearest thing we have to an establishment studio in Britain. Calling it an independent might be technically correct, but it’s as close to a franchise film we have in the UK.
The most successful UK independent film at the UK box office that was not based on previously published material was Non-Stop. That’s right, a $50 million dollar Liam Neeson action film, shot in the US with a Spanish director and financed by a French studio, is somehow both British and independent. The answer to this comes in the small print to the report, which states “an independent film is produced without creative or financial input from the major US studio companies. These are Fox Entertainment Group, NBC Universal, Paramount Motion Pictures Group, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group and Warner Bros Entertainment.” A major studio from any other country in the world could finance your film, and it would still be an independent film according to the BFI.
So, 2014 was a record year at the UK box office, because it’s always a record year if you spin the figures. Cinema attendances down? Don’t worry, let’s look at inward investment. Market share down? That’s OK, independent market share is up. I bet 2015 will be a record year too, partly thanks to a small US/UK film set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Neil Calloway is a pub quiz extraordinaire and Top Gun obsessive. Check back here every Sunday for future installments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszFJHnpNzqHh6gswQ0Srpi5E&feature=player_embedded&v=qqtW2LRPtQY
Originally published February 8, 2015. Updated April 15, 2018.
