A ray of hope for French darkrooms: cinemas have recovered three quarters of their pre-Covid attendance, with 152 million viewers in 2022, according to CNC figures published this Monday.
The year that has just passed has been the first without the closure of movie theaters for health reasons since 2019. But, specifies the National Center for Cinema and the Moving Image, 2022 continues to be “a year of transition still marked by the pandemic ”, recalling that sanitary restrictions such as the vaccination pass and the ban on the sale of sweets were only lifted in mid-March.
The result represents a strong rebound compared to the 95.5 million tickets in 2021 (+59.2%), but it remains “below -26.9% compared to the pre-Covid period and the average historical maximum of the years 2017 to 2019” (207.9 million).
“One of the best covers in the world”
The CNC also pointed out that the supply of buoyant films in 2022 was not yet equivalent to that of the pre-Covid years.
“This is a very encouraging result in a still atypical context. France is registering one of the best recoveries in the world, with a more limited decline compared to, for example, the United States, South Korea, Germany, Spain or Italy. , declared Dominique Boutonnat, president of the CNC, in a press release, who said he was confident for 2023.
In 2022, the top 5 films are still the prerogative of American blockbusters (avatar 2, Top Gun: Maverick, minions 2…), but the market share of French films “has maintained the high levels it has reached since 2020”, in particular due to the pandemic and the “relative scarcity of the supply of American films”, notes the CNC. This share rose to 40.9% compared to 37.2% on average between 2017 and 2019. Regarding the share of American films, it stood at 40.5%.
Winning lap of Pandora
Avatar: The Path of Water by James Cameron was the biggest hit of the year in France, with 7.6 million viewers since its premiere on December 14, according to the CNC.
In 2022, “all the public returned to theaters, but being more selective,” Eric Marti, a specialist at Comscore, an audience analysis company, told AFP on Friday. American cinema was a “motor” when, on the French side, only films “with a certain originality” resisted, to the detriment of great comedies, for example.
Source: BFM TV
