11/01/2024 - The Italian box office took €495.6 million last year with a total of 70.6 million tickets sold, equating to a rise of 61.6% and 58.6% respectively on 2022

There Is Still Tomorrow by Paola Cortellesi

The Italian film market is on the right path to returning to pre-Covid levels, according to Cinetel data presented yesterday in Rome’s Barberini Cinema. In 2023, the national box office reported 495.6 million euros in earnings and cinema admissions totalling 70.6 million, equating to a rise of 61.6% and 58.6% respectively on 2022. These figure still represent a 16.3% drop in earnings and a 23.2% fall in admissions compared to the pre-pandemic three-year period spanning 2017-2019, but the sector has also seen growth in the market share enjoyed by Italian productions (including co-productions) at the box office: in 2023, national titles accounted for 24.3% of takings and 25.9% of admissions, corresponding to earnings of 120.6 million euros (a 100% rise on 2022’s 60.3 million) and 18.2 million admissions (a 93.9% rise on 2022’s 9.4 million). On the European level, Italy’s share of the market comes second only to France, at 39.8%, and continues to exceed Germany (16.4%), Spain (16.2%) and the UK (8.1%).

One crucial development last year was the improvement reported over the summer period, which is traditionally considered to be the weakest film season: between May and August, results surpassed those achieved in the three-year period spanning 2017-2019, which helped this second quarter to achieve the best ever box office revenue figures. Weekly releases of major titles were decisive in this respect, even in July and August when Barbie (2nd highest grossing film of the year) and Oppenheimer [+see also:
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New for last year, in the field of data collection, was the Cinexpert weekly monitoring initiative commissioned by Cinetel to unearth the sociodemographic make-up of cinema audiences. It revealed that 2023 was a year notably marked by growth in female audiences (up 77% on 2022) and older-aged audiences (a 92% rise in 50-59-year-olds and an 81% rise in viewers over 60), two categories which had proved more reluctant, in 2022, to return to cinemas following their re-opening.

“The various components of the industry are becoming increasingly united, and cinemas will continue to exist in league with creations, our economic potential and our relationships with TV, streaming and network audiences”, ANICA president Francesco Rutelli enthused, adding that “we need to keep on innovating with Italian products, which are once again enjoying very significant market shares”. According to Mario Liorini, “the quality of these works is one of the main factors for their success, together with the brilliant summer season enjoyed by the film industry, thanks to the structured and consistent support of the Italian Ministry of Culture, especially in terms of communications and promotion”. ANEC’s president also stressed that “the direct involvement of authors and artists attending screenings of their films in cinemas has been and will continue to be essential”.

“2023 was also the year in which film schools returned en masse”, the president of ANICA’s distributors Luigi Lonigro stressed. “These numbers won’t have a major effect on the market but they’re crucial indicators of one particular cinema audience taking shape and being reborn”. Last but not least, on the subject of support from the Italian Ministry of Culture, the Undersecretary for Culture Lucia Borgonzoni reminded us that “the application process opened today for requests for tax credit investment in cinemas, a measure totalling 25 million euros”.

(Translated from Italian)