Film Council announce £1m move to increase choice at cinemas

Cinema-goers across the UK should have the opportunity to see a wider choice of films at their local cinemas in future, thanks to a new £1 million a year initiative launched by the Film Council.
This new 'Specialised Films Print and Advertising' initiative is intended to give cinema-goers access to a much broader selection of UK and international feature films via independent cinemas across the country, at a time when cinemas are mainly showing a few selection of large scale feature films.
Approximately 60% of screens last December were taken over by just two films, 'Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers' and 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets'. The initiative will operate by providing grants to film distributors to both increase the number of prints of specialised films (such as arthouse, foreign language and film classics) available for showing in cinemas, and to contribute to more effective advertising campaigns to make potential audiences aware of opportunities to see them.
Research by the Film Council has shown that while blockbusters such as Harry Potter are often released in the UK with more than 1,000 film prints available for use at cinemas, a limited number of larger specialised film releases total a maximum of around 70 prints, and the average number of prints of a foreign language specialist film available for screening at any one time is eight. By increasing the number of prints available, and giving a boost to film release publicity campaigns, the initiative is intended to ensure that more people across the country will be made more aware of a larger choice of films available to them and have greater opportunity to see them at their local cinema.
The initiative is the first in a series by the Film Council's new Distribution and Exhibition Fund to offer a more diverse range of films to a wider range of audiences.
(GB)