Since the beginning of the pandemic three years ago, there has been no cinema death in Germany, but the movie theaters are still lacking audiences. Around 78 million tickets were sold last year, according to the Berlin Film Promotion Agency (FFA) on Wednesday. That was almost twice as many as in 2021, when cinemas were closed for months. At that time, around 42.1 million tickets were sold over the year.
However, the number of visitors is still not up to the time before the pandemic. In comparison, around 118.6 million tickets were sold in 2019. So people recently went to the cinema less (-34.3 percent). At around 722 million euros, annual sales were also lower than in 2019 (-29.5 percent).
“Avatar: The Way of Water” is way ahead
The tickets have become a bit more expensive on average. According to the analysis, the annual average was 9.26 euros. That was 39 cents more than in 2021 (4.3 percent). “The price increase for cinema tickets is well below the inflation rate of 7.9 percent,” wrote FFA board member Peter Dinges. “Nevertheless, we have to make sure that lower-income groups can still afford to go to the cinema in the future.”
In particular, the blockbuster “Avatar: The Way of Water” attracted many viewers. Although the film only opened in mid-December, around 4.5 million tickets were sold for it alone by the end of the year. According to the industry association HDF Kino, at the beginning of February 2023 there were already more than 9 million tickets. Last year, no cinema film in Germany had more visitors.
The sequel to “Minions” (around 4.1 million tickets), the action film “Top Gun: Maverick” (around 3.7 million), the fantasy film “Fantastic Beasts: Dumbledore’s Secret” (around 3 million) and the second part of “The School of Magical Animals” (around 2.4 million).
trend towards normalization
Of the more than 2,300 films shown in cinemas, about half were from Germany or were co-produced with money from Germany. Of the tickets, 27 percent went to these films with German participation and around 64 percent to US films.
Dinges sees a tendency towards normalization of the cinema market. “While the loss compared to pre-pandemic 2019 is still bitter, there is evidence of recovery over the year, with June even showing a plus compared to 2019.”
After the pandemic began, it was questionable how many cinemas would survive. According to Dinges, there was no cinema death. In a year-on-year comparison, there were slightly fewer seats (-1.5 percent) and slightly fewer screens (-0.4 percent), but slightly more cinemas (-0.4 percent). According to statistics, there are around 1730 venues nationwide. “The changes to the cinema inventory are minimal, and of course we’re particularly pleased about that,” Dinges wrote. “Although the continuous growth that we have seen since 2014 has come to a standstill during the pandemic, the cinemas have come through the crisis relatively well so far.”
