September box office up by a fifth
Total UK and Ireland box office for the month of September exceeded £60m, according to the latest figures from Comscore.
That amounts to a 21% increase in box office revenue compared with September 2023.
Year to date, total box office is tracking 10% behind last year — a significant improvement compared with August, when year-to-date box office was tracking 12% behind.
Tom Linay, content business director at sales house Digital Cinema Media (DCM), told The Media Leader that September is “usually one of the smallest months of the year, if not the smallest” due to a relative dearth of new releases.
Linay added that DCM’s own data shows that admissions were likely also up compared with a year earlier period, although these figures are not confirmed until later in the month.
Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice drove an outsized portion of the revenue for September. The comedy-horror sequel has maintained the number one position at the UK box office four weeks running, earning £21.6m so far, making it sixth-best this year. Its £7.3m opening weekend was the fifth-biggest September opening of all time.
For comparison, last year’s biggest September release, Sony Pictures’ The Equalizer 3, earned just over £8m.
Other top September releases included Universal’s Speak No Evil (£4.4m) and Kate Winslet-led biopic Lee (£3.1m).
Meanwhile, major summer films Deadpool & Wolverine and It Ends With Us both added an additional £2.1m in September.
October rests on Joker
Looking ahead, box office and attendance success in October will rest primarily on the shoulders of Todd Philips’ Joker: Folie à Deux, which opens this weekend.
The Joker sequel has received generally poor reviews from critics and early audiences.
Other major titles include DreamWorks animation The Wild Robot (18 October), which was singled out by Linay: “Everything points to it doing really well.”
Paramount horror film Smile 2, Warner’s Stephen King adaptation Salem’s Lot and Signature film Terrifier 3 are all banking on audiences interested in being spooked around Halloween.
Meanwhile, ahead of November’s Paddington in Peru, StudioCanal is reissuing both Paddington and Paddington 2.
“October should be up year on year as well, if things come in as expected,” Linay said.
He expects each month between now and the rest of the year to be up “significantly” compared with 2023 — something that could bring total box office revenue for the full year near to, or exceeding, last year’s total.