Diverse film slate drives 18% September box office jump
September box office in the UK and Ireland increased 18% year on year to surpass £71m, according to the latest figures from Comscore.
Year-to-date box office is now running 9% ahead of 2024 and 1% behind the Barbenheimer-fuelled 2023.
According to Tom Linay, content business director at cinema sales house Digital Cinema Media, admissions during the month of September are also up by an estimated 8%. Official admissions figures are released later in the month.
“There were some big surprises this month,” he told The Media Leader.
The ninth instalment in the Conjuring franchise, The Conjuring: Last Rites, was the top film of September. Its £16.7m gross makes it the fourth-biggest horror flick of all time.
The exceptional performance befuddled Linay, who indicated he didn’t know “where that uplift came from”.
Previous Conjuring films reliably grossed between £10m-£11m with around 1m admissions, and it’s not clear what drove larger audiences (around 1.5m admissions, according to Linay) this time around.
The early-September release window has done well for horror films in recent years, including both It films and last year’s Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, and Linay speculated the UK’s increased interest in Halloween could have downstream effects on the genre during the September and October months.
Meanwhile, anime film Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba Infinity Castle was the third-highest grossing title of the month, with £6.4m, making it the second-biggest anime film of all time behind 2000’s Pokemon: The First Movie (£11.7m).
“Anime’s been growing and growing and we’ve been expecting one to really pop off eventually,” Linay added.
Other top films of September included Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale (£14.7m) and late-August release The Roses (£5.7m in September), both of which attract a very different demographic compared to The Conjuring and Demon Slayer.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s highly-acclaimed One Battle After Another rounded out the month’s top five with £4m, despite debuting the final week of the month. Its £2.4m opening weekend is a record for PTA, and Linay posits the film is likely to have legs as positive word-of-mouth spreads amid awards season.
October preview: Biopics, horror and Tron, oh my
This month features a similarly diverse slate of films as September, again arguably without a tentpole flick to drive mass audiences.
The month opens with Bennie Safdie’s Mark Kerr biopic The Smashing Machine and Justin Tipping’s horror flick Him.
From 3-5 October, Taylor Swift is likely to provide a box office boost with The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, a 90-minute feature where the pop star discusses her new album and unveils its music videos.
For sci-fi lovers, Tron returns with Tron: Ares on 10 October. Other films to watch include horror sequel The Black Phone 2 (16 October), Channing Tatum crime drama Roofman (17 October), and Bruce Springsteen biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (24 October).
Rounding out the month on Halloween is the next absurdist film from Yorgos Lanthimos, Bugonia, starring Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons.
Linay commented: “It feels like there’s a wider variety every month”.
