A room at the La Clef cinema, January 16, 2020 in Paris (AFP/Archives/Philippe LOPEZ)
Glimmer of hope for French dark rooms: cinemas have recovered three quarters of their pre-Covid attendance, with 152 million admissions in 2022, according to CNC figures released on Monday.
The year that has just passed was the first without the closure of theaters for health reasons, unlike 2020 and 2021. But, specifies the National Center for Cinema and the Moving Image, 2022 remains “a year of transition always marked by the pandemic”, recalling that health restrictions such as the vaccination pass and the ban on the sale of confectionery were not lifted until mid-March.
The result represents a strong rebound compared to the 95.5 million admissions in 2021 (+59.2%), but remains “down -26.9% compared to the pre-Covid period and the historical average high for the 2017 to 2019 financial years” (207.9 million).
The CNC also pointed out that the offer 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 recorded one of the best recoveries in the world, with a more limited decline compared, for example, to the United States, South Korea, Germany, to Spain or Italy”, declared in a press release Dominique Boutonnat, president of the CNC, who said he was confident for 2023.
In 2022, the top 5 films will remain the prerogative of American blockbusters (Avatar, Top Gun, the Minions, etc.), but the market share of French films “has remained at the high levels it has reached since 2020”, in particular due to the pandemic and the “relative scarcity of the offer of American films”, notes the CNC.
This share amounted to 40.9% against 37.2% on average over 2017 to 2019. As for the share of American films, it stood at 40.5%.
“Avatar: the way of the water” by James Cameron was the biggest success of the year in France, with 7.6 million admissions since its release on December 14, according to the CNC.
In 2022, “the entire public returned to theaters, but by being more selective,” Eric Marti, a specialist at Comscore, an audience analysis company, told AFP on Friday. American films were a “driving force” when, on the French side, only films “with a certain originality” resisted, to the detriment of big comedies, for example.
© 2023 AFP
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