After a disappointing 2014, which saw numbers down by almost £57m from the year before, the UK cinema box office has seen a stellar start to 2015.
There were more than 42 million admissions in the first quarter of the year, which is 6% higher than the equivalent period in 2014. It’s also a figure that has only been exceeded four times before, in 1972, 2000, 2010 and 2011.
The impressive number was inflated by the success of the erotic blockbuster Fifty Shades of Grey, which took £35m by the end of March. The biggest British hit of the period was the Oscar-winning biopic The Theory of Everything, which took £21m. Other success stories in the quarter included Cinderella, Taken 3, Shaun the Sheep Movie and Kingsman: The Secret Service.
There were also some holdover hits from the end of 2014 that were still proving popular, including Paddington and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.
The market share of UK films in the first quarter was 40%, while UK independent films had a 9% share. The biggest film at the UK box office last year was The Lego Movie, which made just over £34m. Fifty Shades of Grey has already beaten that figure this year. This weekend, Avengers: Age of Ultron opens (the first Avengers film made more than £53m), while later in the year, James Bond returns in Spectre (in 2012, Skyfall made £107m) and the new Star Wars film hits cinema screens (Revenge of the Sith brought in £47m in 2005).
