September box office up 3% as Resident Evil ends strong Q3
UK and Ireland box office revenue totalled £73.3m in September, according to the latest figures from Comscore, 3% ahead of the same month last year (£71.2m).
Year-to-date box office has reached £976.6m, now running 21% ahead of the equivalent period and on track to exceed £1bn in revenue next month.
The top film of September was Zack Cregger’s horror reboot Resident Evil, which grossed £9.87m.
Resident Evil tops September with £9.9m as new releases take the top three spots
2026 has been an exceptional year for horror titles, with Resident Evil trailing Obsession (£20m) and Backrooms (£13.2m) for gross.
The second-biggest film of the month was Practical Magic 2 (£7.47m) followed by World War II drama Pressure (£6.15m).
The rest of the month’s top titles were filled out by summer carry-overs and re-releases. These included The Odyssey (£5.65m; £86.94m lifetime), Spider-Man: Brand New Day (£4.55m; £99.6m lifetime), and the re-release of Avengers: Endgame (£5.18m after one week — the largest opening for a re-issue of all-time).
Brand New Day is now the third-highest grossing film of all-time globally and in the UK (not adjusted for inflation).
Tom Linay, head of film at the UK’s largest cinema ads sales house Digital Cinema Media (DCM) called August “another decent month”, with top summer flicks “still hanging in there”.
He noted that while box office was up modestly year-on-year, cinema admissions jumped by an estimated 13% at DCM cinemas (official admissions figures are released later in the month).
The 9.9m estimated admissions would make it the biggest September in cinemagoing since before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Linay attributed the strong footfall in part to this year’s strong National Cinema Weekend, which brought in 1.5m admissions across two days for viewers seeking discounts.
The strong September is notable given the month is “usually one of the smallest of the year” as kids go back to school and blockbuster releases are often held back toward the late autumn/early winter period for to build momentum for awards season and holiday viewing.
October preview: Hoover, Digger, and a Social Reckoning
October kicks off with Alejandro González Iñárritu’s polarising comedy/drama Digger and Colleen Hoover adaptation Verity, which both open on 2 October.
If Resident Evil wasn’t enough to put cinemagoers in the Halloween spirit, Universal’s Other Mommy debuts on 9 October alongside Aaron Sorkin’s Social Network follow-up The Social Reckoning and Paul Greengrass’s peasant revolt drama The Uprising.
Another video game adaptation, Street Fighter, releases on 16 October, as Whalefall.
A spate of genre films debut on 23 October. These include Sacha Baron Cohen comedy Ali G: Who Iz I?, horror-superhero film Clayface, and Kazuo Ishiguro adaption Klara and the Sun.
The month is rounded out on the 30th with Olivia Colman comedy-fantasy romance Wicker and Robert Pattison thriller Primetime.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day closes in on £100m to lead the year so far
Looking further ahead, Linay shared that multiple premium advertising slots have already been sold for both Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three, with anticipation already brewing for what could be the biggest December in years.
The end of the year will also feature a spate of buzzy documentaries that could add a bit of additional lift to Q4 cinemagoing. These include Nathan Fielder’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything (undated UK release; 16 October premiere in the US), Israel-Gaza documentary NAZA, Harlem Renaissance documentary Once Upon A Time in Harlem, and Elon Musk profile Musk.