January box office jumps 10% on genre and arthouse films
January box office revenue grew 10% year on year to £94m, driven by substantial contributions from December releases and strong performances from a variety of genre and arthouse films.
According to the latest Comscore figures, Universal Pictures’ Nosferatu was the top film of the month, earning £12.7m. Robert Eggers’ remake has notably become the sixth-highest-grossing horror release in the UK and Ireland of all time.
The film is followed in box office performance by two Disney offerings: Mufasa: The Lion King (£12.1m in January) and Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown (£9.1m).
Tom Linay, content business director at cinema sales house Digital Cinema Media (DCM), told The Media Leader that the improved January performance compared with 2024 was “driven by a very strong Christmas slate”, as well as a wide variety of genre releases.
Apart from Mufasa, December release Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (£8.2m) also performed well, while November’s Wicked (£4.9m) and Moana 2 (£4.8m) continued their strong runs.
“It feels like there’s almost something for everyone at the moment, except for the comic book fan,” Linay said, noting that Marvel’s Captain America: Brave New World will come out on Valentine’s weekend to satiate that demographic.
“Mufasa and Nosferatu, the two biggest films, couldn’t be more different,” he added.
Awards season
The Bafta and Oscar season has also encouraged cinemagoers to check out arthouse films and is likely to further bump February box office.
Apart from Nosferatu, romantic drama We Live in Time (£8.4m) and road trip comedy-drama A Real Pain (£2.9m) also cracked the top 10 highest-grossing films in January. Linay estimated that the highly acclaimed The Brutalist sits at £2m gross.
According to Linay, cinema admissions — the currency on which ads are purchased — were also up an estimated 8% year on year in January. Full admissions figures will be released in mid-February.
Mad about Bridget
Looking ahead, Linay said DCM has already sold all of its ad slots for the two biggest releases of February: Captain America and Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.
According to Linay, the latter is shaping up to be “one of the biggest films of the year” and could ultimately earn close to £60m. He suggested that, since the audiences for Bridget Jones skews slightly older, it is likely to “sustain through the next few weeks” after its release better than its competitors.
February also contains school half-term and, with it, an influx of family films. As there wasn’t a major family-friendly release during January, Dreamworks’ Dog Man is likely to perform well this month by virtue of a relative dearth of competition.
But key to cinema’s success in 2025, Linay pointed out, is maintaining a film slate with variety for all audiences.
“In terms of release schedule, we’re not quite at 2019 levels yet,” he concluded. “But we’re on the way.”