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Viewing report
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UK Film Market - Market Report Plus 2009
Key Note Publications Ltd, April 2009
The market for feature films, or ‘the movies’, is going through a period of major change in the way that consumers access and acquire them to watch at home. Alongside the traditional ‘release windows’ for major films, such as cinema release, video rental and buying DVDs (digital versatile discs), consumers can now use the Internet to download films or their digital televisions to subscribe to film channels or buy films on a ‘pay-per-view’ (PPV) or ‘video-on-demand’ (VOD) basis.
This fragmentation across distribution channels, or ‘windows’, represents an inevitable adaptation to new technology, but it has not benefited the industry economically. Taking all the windows into account, this report values the UK film industry at £4.2bn in 2008, down from an all-time peak of £4.47bn in 2004.
Income from selling films on DVD (£1.63bn in 2008) or renting them (£250m) is no longer increasing and the future lies with new channels such as VOD, up 250% since 2004, although it is still a fairly small market. Downloading films to home computers is still in its infancy but using the Internet to order DVDs is thriving, both for buying them (e.g. from Amazon) or arranging rentals to be delivered (e.g. from LOVEFiLM). The pervasive use of the Internet has put severe pressure on traditional high-street outlets.
Despite the negative economic factors, UK cinema went into 2009 on a high, having seen the top box office release of the year, Mamma Mia!, take over from Titanic (released in 1997) as the most lucrative film ever in UK cinemas (and also, subsequently, in the DVD charts). Dividing the critics, the Abba-inspired musical was a breath of fresh air for a cinema market becoming accustomed to formulaic, if successful, sequel films such as the Pirates of the Caribbean and Harry Potter series.
While Mamma Mia! and other recent box office successes such as The Dark Knight, Wall-E and Slumdog Millionaire have demonstrated the variety that cinema can offer, the production side, for the UK market, remains heavily biased to the old Hollywood studios, who still dominate despite their absorption into conglomerates such as News Corporation (20th Century Fox), Time Warner (Warner Bros) and Sony (Columbia and a share in MGM).
Making up the big seven are Universal, Walt Disney and Paramount, giving 2009 a broadly similar line-up of studios to 1939, when Hollywood was celebrating the success of Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz and cinema audiences were counted in billions rather than millions. UK cinema audiences have stabilised in recent years and cinema-going, focused on the first window of release, is still the litmus test for the film industry. This stability, together with the occasional breakthrough, such as Mamma Mia!, bodes well for any industry entering depression-threatened 2009, and a trip to the movies has the added attraction of helping consumers cast aside economic worries, as in previous gloomy periods for the economy.
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