Box office takings fall by more than a quarter in two years
- Never in the last two years have so little people been to Spanish cinemas. The spectator drain for local productions continues.
As if Spanish cinema wasn’t already in enough trouble these days (read more)! New data published by Rentrak shows that, during the first trimester of 2012, the Spanish box office suffered a 18.5% drop in admissions compared to 2011 and a 27.7% drop compared to 2010. From January to March, only 21.3 million people went to the cinema nationwide, the worst figures for the last 11 years.
Spanish cinema has been particularly hard hit. Spanish productions may have made up 12,7% of the market (in 2011 was at 15% - read more), but even this figure is improved by the contribution of American blockbuster Wrath of the Titans (foto), that, with a Spanish contribution of up to 31%, counts as a national production. Without it, national productions would only have made up 11.2% of the market.
No Spanish films so far this year have been outright successes. Even films that seemed to have it all to become relative box office successes (such as Red Lights [+see also:
trailer
interview: Rodrigo Cortés
film profile] by Rodrigo Cortés, with Robert De Niro and Sigourney Weaver, [REC] 3 Génesis [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Paco Plaza, the comedy Ghost Graduation [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Javier Ruiz Caldera, and Katmandú, un espejo en el cielo [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Icíar Bollaín) have perfomed poorly, although they were not complete failures, with earnings of between €1.5m and €3m each.
And then there were complete commercial flops: Extraterrestrial [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nacho Vigalondo
film profile] by Nacho Vigalondo, Childish Games [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Antonio Chavarrías, Dark Impulse [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Mariano Barroso, and Silencio en la nieve [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Gerardo Herrero
film profile] by Gerardo Herrero. All were released on more than 100 copies, but at the box office took no more than €500,000 in earnings.
Beyond the figures, the most negative aspect of all this is the pessimism overcoming the film sector, as audiences walk away from it, as well as institutions continuing to dismantle, with no qualms whatsoever, a system that, over the last years, had actually made the Spanish film sector one of the most dynamic and healthy in Europe.
(Translated from Spanish)
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