Critically, European movies are having a hell of a 12 months. Euro cinema is well represented on this season’s Oscar race, with the likes of Jacques Audiard’s transgender 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 end-of-life drama The Room Next Door, are among the many award frontrunners.
Commercially, it’s one other story. On Thursday, the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO), a research body, published its annual report on the theatrical performance of European movies worldwide. It’s not a reasonably picture.
In accordance with EAO, European movies accounted for just 6 percent of worldwide ticket sales in 2023, in comparison with 56 percent for U.S. productions and 26 percent for Chinese movies. Japan, because of the worldwide success of anime, is close on Europe’s heels, with Japanese releases accounting for five percent of theatrical admissions worldwide. (The EAO measures theatrical admissions, not gross box office revenue to higher account for currency fluctuations and differences in ticket prices across different countries).
Total theatrical admissions for European movies hit 239 million last 12 months, up barely (2.7 percent) on 2022 but ticket sales are still some 35 percent below the pre-pandemic average, from 2014 to 2019, of 367 million admissions annually.
Worryingly, admissions in the US and China, once crucial export markets for European movies, “are plummeting” the EAO reports. In 2015 there have been greater than 33 million U.S. admissions for European movies — led by Euro blockbusters like Olivier Megaton’sactioner Taken 3 (9.8 million admissions) and Paul King’s family feature Paddington (8.1 million). The number last 12 months was 4.8 million. China’s love of European cinema peaked in 2017, when near 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 Paddington 2. Last 12 months, European movies sold just 1.3 million tickets within the Middle Kingdom.
The dearth of Euro blockbusters — what the EAO defines as movies that sell greater than 1 million tickets — is a component of the issue. “European blockbusters are an endangered species,” the report says, noting that movies achieving multiple million admissions are down 43 percent in comparison with pre-pandemic years.
What hasn’t fallen is the variety of European movies getting made. The EAO counted 3,349 European movies in circulation worldwide in 2023, a 7.8 percent year-on-year jump. European movies actually account for greater than half (52 percent) of the overall movies in circulation globally, the group said. The gap between supply and demand is accounted for by generous government support, with most European movies being entirely or largely financed through subsidies and tax incentives.
Matthijs Wouter Knol, CEO of the European Film Academy, sees the European theatrical market at a crossroads. The continent’s fragmented structure — with European movies being released at different times in numerous countries, often by different distributors with different marketing strategies — shouldn’t be fit for purpose in a digital world where borders don’t exist.
“We’ve to persuade distributors to interrupt with their old habits. Since the world around us is changing, the media and promotion tools, the expectations and habits of the audience are changing very fast.”
Knol points to the success of coordinated pan-European releases, like Ruben Östlund’s The Triangle of Sadness (3 million admissions worldwide) and Justine Triet’s Oscar-winning Anatomy of a Fall (2. 4 million admissions) as proof that cross-border cooperation is the longer term.
“In case you have a look at what European film has to supply, in case you have a look at the titles, in case you have a look at the talent, in case you have a look at the stories and topics being addressed through these European movies, I believe you may see we have now a number of the most original and appealing cinema on the earth for the time being,” says Knol.
“But when we wish the European film to be seen by audiences, we are able to’t explain to them why we still promote movies over the course of 12 months at different times in alternative ways in numerous territories and languages. The world just doesn’t work that way anymore.”
