Boom in UK movie revenues - as US and other markets tumble.

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The Times January 03, 2006

Britain defies the box office slump as Harry Potter flies to the rescue
By Dan Sabbagh, Media Editor



BRITAIN bucked the downward trend that hit the United States and other big markets in 2005, as cinema-goers flocked to watch films inspired by English writers.

Domestic revenues dipped just 0.5 per cent to £767 million. In America, the world’s most important film market, box-office takings tumbled 6 per cent to $8.8 billion (£5.1 billion), making last year the worst since 2001.

Veronika Kwan-Rubinek, president of Warner Brothers International, said that the “UK had been much more robust” than elsewhere. “We’ll be doing an analysis early this year to establish what happened.”

British audiences were lured by a strong slate of films based on British works, including Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Chronicles of Narnia and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The UK is the world’s third-largest film market by revenues after the United States and Japan.

Time Warner’s Warner Brothers was the top studio both in the US — where its share was 15.6 per cent — and in the rest of the world. Warner succeeded with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which grossed $807 million, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Batman Begins.

Key to its success was the high proportion of family orientated films, which remain the most lucrative. Smaller studios specialising in films for adult audiences, such as Lion’s Gate or MGM, suffered in a year that saw the larger studios consolidate market share and acquire rivals.

Warner Brothers saw off News Corporation’s 20th Century Fox, which was helped into second place by distributing the year’s most popular film, Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith, which took $848.5 million. Both Warner and Fox grew in the year.

Disney, which owns Buena Vista, and Sony — last year’s No 1 — went backwards. Paramount, part of Viacom, also improved on a dismal 2004, helped by War of the Worlds.



thetimesonline.co.uk