Comscore announced today that the UK and Irish territory box office for 2024 surpassed the £1bn mark for a second consecutive year following the global COVID pandemic. Thanks in part to a very healthy fourth quarter, box office receipts for the whole of 2024 totalled £1.06bn for parity with 2023’s trading, despite ongoing fallout from last year’s industrial strike action in the film sector.
1,114 new titles were released in cinemas across the UK and Ireland (vs. 1,015 in 2023). Family animation Inside Out 2 (£59m) was the highest grossing film of the year; closely followed by comic book action comedy Deadpool & Wolverine (£58m) and big budget musical Wicked (£57m); with animated sequel Despicable Me 4 (£49m) and sci-fi epic Dune: Part II (£40m) rounding out the year’s top five pictures.
Walt Disney was the no.1 distributor in the territory, landing two of the top 10 films of the year from 19 new releases and achieving £221m in box office for an overall market share of 21%. Their marquee slate in 2024 included no.1 film Inside Out 2; family friendly pictures Moana 2 and Mufasa: The Lion King; action films Deadpool & Wolverine and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes; sci-fi horror Alien: Romulus; acclaimed British drama All of Us Strangers; and a brace of Yorgos Lanthimos movies with Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness.
Coming in a close second for the year were Universal with three of the top 10 films, 30 new releases, £206m box office and 20% market share. Their diverse slate of releases included no.3 film Wicked; popular animations Despicable Me 4, Kung Fu Panda 4, Migration and The Wild Robot; thoughtful comedy dramas Anora and The Holdovers; horror flicks Speak No Evil, MaXXXine and Abigail; and high-octane action capers The Fall Guy, Argylle and Monkey Man.
Whilst global box office numbers are being collated, estimates from Gower Street Analytics have the worldwide total for 2024 at around $31bn (vs. $34bn in 2023), a slight dip of 8% year-on-year. Walt Disney was the highest grossing studio globally with over $5bn in box office, the first studio to pass the $5bn mark since 2019. The UK & Ireland increased its global market share, generating 5% of the world’s box office in 2024 (vs.4% in 2023) from just 1% of the world’s population.
Further detail on 2024 box office results can be found in Comscore’s box office review and for an early forecast of the theatrical market in 2025 see Gower Street’s predictions.