2009 Box Office Review - France - Part 2

Posted by Ethan on Wednesday, April 28, 2010 in 2009 Global Box Office • Europe • (0) Comments • Permalink •

DISTRIBUTION

Fox was the French distribution leader with a 12% market share across 21 titles with major contributions by  “Avatar” and “Ice Age 3.”  Those two titles combined for 20 million admissions of the total of 201million admissions for the play period. Fox held a 6% theater share for the year.  Although American comedy franchise “Night at the Museum: Battle” opened to only 849 admissions per screen, it ended up ranking 29th for the year with 1.6m admissions.

“Harry Potter” helped to put Warner’s in second place for the top distributor position with an almost 10% market share and 18.5m admissions, of which 6 million came solely from that title.  “Gran Torino” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (2.6 million admissions) performances provided added muscle.

Last year’s top distributor Pathe’ fell to third place this year with admissions of 15.5 million representing a 8% market share.  “LOL” and “Slumdog Millionaire” (3 million admissions) are Pathe’s best performing titles, which also earned them the greatest theater share for the year at 8%.   In 2009 they released 18 titles, up one release from the prior year though they did have the top performing titles in “Welcome to the Sticks” and the latest “Asterix” installment.

Sony’s 19 releases and market share of just over 7% saw the studio rise from a #7 ranking last year when they controlled a 5.5% market share to #4 this year. Sony’s best performing title was “2012.”

Seventeen releases for Disney this year with its best performing title “Up” garnered the studio a 7% market share, flat to their performance last year when they ranked number three and had fifteen titles.

French distributors SND, UGC, Mars, Studio Canal, Wild Bunch and Metropolitan all stack up next in terms of French market share.  SND had admissions of 12.5 million and a 6.5% market share across 18 titles, with majority credit to the “Twilight” franchise.  UGC grew their market share from 1% last year to 6% this year, primarily driven by “Neuilly Sa Mere” with 2.5 million admissions.  UGC and Mars each had 22 releases and Mars’ market share was the next greatest after UGC with 5.4%.  Studio Canal and Wild Bunch both hover just around 5% market share with Studio Canal above and Wild Bunch below. Metropolitan had the most releases of any distributor with 33 titles on the slate and controlled 4.7% of the market.

Universal ascended to a 4.5% market share, up from their previous year’s 3%. Paramount earned a 4% market share for ’09 as compared to the 10% they had in ’08.

Europa Corp has seven of the top 20 French exports outside of France for the past decade with “Taken” and the “Transporter” series at the top of the list but retained only a 4.5% market share domestically for this year with lead title “Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard.”

21 distributors had admissions of over 1 million for the year in France, while 94 others distributed at least one film during the year demonstrating the crowded marketplace and the on-going fight for screens.

GENRE

With “Avatar,” “Harry Potter” and “2012” as three of the top five overall best performing box office titles, the science fiction fantasy genre tallied an impressive almost 27 million admissions across just 17 releases.  Peter Jackson produced “District 9” ranked 50th for the year at just over 1 million admissions.

Animated titles “Ice Age 3,” “Up,” “Arthur and the Revenge of the Maltazard,” “Bolt” (3 million admissions), “A Christmas Carol” (1.4 million admissions) and “Monsters vs. Aliens” (1.3 million admissions) all benefitted from 3D releases as they all earned over 1 million admissions out of the 39 releases in the kid friendly genre. 

None of the domestic comedies came close to the astounding 20.5 million admissions the French found in “Welcome to the Sticks” last year. “Petit Nicolas” capitalized on good word of mouth and grew from a 986,000 opening admission count to 5.5 million cumulative admissions to make it the number one comedy film for the year and the number four overall top performing title.   The only American comedy to connect with French audiences was the surprise hit “The Hangover” which logged in 2 million admissions to rank number 21 for the best performing titles of the year.  Local distributor UGC had two comedy titles in the overall top twenty-five.  Those were “Neuilly Sa Mere” at 2.5 million admissions and “Lucky Luke” at 2 million admissions.

The action genre had 11 out of 39 titles breaking 1 million admissions.  However the top earner here was “Inglorious Basterds” which fell right under 3 million admissions though it remained on top for four weeks.  “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” was the second highest grossing action film at 2 million admissions and landed at #19 on the overall charts.

The genre with the most entries at 282 new releases this year is drama, which is dominated by American films and a single British entry.  The “Twilight” franchise, “Gran Torino,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” are the top performers beating out France’s Oscar entry, “The Prophet” which grossed 1.3 million admissions.

“Angels and Demons” with 2 million admissions beat out “Knowing” at 1.4 million admissions in the horror genre.  Wild Bunch’s release of low budget horror film ”Paranormal Activity” just broke 1 million admissions across 240 screens.

Next: An analysis of local product and looking forward

Ellen Pittleman, http://hybridentus.com, is a veteran studio executive based in Los Angeles. Most recently, she served as SVP, International Co-Productions and Worldwide Acquisitions for Paramount Pictures. She also launched the DVD Premiere group there, with films including Jonathan Demme’s “Neil Young:  Heart of Gold” and the sequel to the $100MM+ “Save the Last Dance.”  Working from a marketing and distribution perspective, she consults on strategic planning, deal negotiation, acquisitions, film library valuation and feature development with clients from Rio to London to Beijing.  She’s also currently developing a feature on George Foreman’s comeback years, among other projects.