2012: A Great Year For UK Film

The success of the British film industry continued in 2012, with UK films taking in a total of $5.3 billion and claiming as much as a 15% share of the world market, the third highest on record.
The news follows the publication of the 2013 BFI Statistical Yearbook, which showed UK-wide cinema admissions reaching 172.5 million in 2012, the third highest level in forty years.
The UK’s Video on Demand (VoD) market grew by 50%, while box office receipts totalled £1.1 billion, the highest on record.
The big blockbuster story of 2012 was, of course, the latest entry in the James Bond franchise, Skyfall, which earned £103 million and is now the highest-grossing UK film of all time.
Britain is now home to the first and second most successful franchises of all time, with Harry Potter taking over $7.7 billion worldwide and Bond currently at over $6.1 billion.
The highest grossing UK independent films were The Woman in Black and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which took over £20 million each.
The top 20 independent UK films of 2012 clocked up a combined gross of £98.5 million.
UK independents overall took 9% of the total box office, their second highest market share on record.
Stories from UK writers continue to draw in audiences. Despite the fact that only 5% of films released during the year were adapted from UK story material, they accounted for 23% of the total box office.
However, some challenges remain.
The top 100 UK films earned 92% of the total gross, meaning the remaining 547 films had to compete for box office revenues of £93 million.
The BFI says continued public investment is "critical" in helping distributors mitigate risk and keep the UK film portfolio diverse and wide-ranging.
While UK film performed well in theatres, sales of feature films on video (DVD, Blu-ray), fell during the year to £968 million, the lowest level since 2001.
Video rentals were down from 86 million in 2011 to 78 million in 2012, with the value of the rental market for film falling from £246 million in 2011 to £229 million in 2012.
Amanda Nevill, Chief Executive of the BFI, said: "UK films captivated audiences and 007 spearheaded another strong year for UK film internationally, which collectively pulled in $5.3 billion and helped export British culture and creativity around the world in 2012. Our Yearbook shows film’s continued importance to the UK economy overall, with a record turnover of £7.7 billion and trade surplus of £1 billion in 2011.
"It’s encouraging that UK audiences of all ages embraced the cinema experience and it’s very exciting that we may be heading towards a tipping point in audience use of Video on Demand services. But we can’t fully explore this growing new market without the numbers so we need providers of Video on Demand services to release robust data to help us better understand and analyse the emerging VoD market for the benefit of the entire UK film industry."
www.bfi.org.uk