In 2024, the UK box office revenue was 978.1 million British pounds, a slight decrease in comparison to the previous year's figure of 978.5 million pounds. While the year-to-year change in box office was exceptionally high in 2021 and 2022, following the unprecedented decline in activity in 2020 caused by the pandemic, that return to normal has considerably slowed down since.Â
Frequency & pricing
Since the pandemic, the annual number of movie tickets sold across the UK stood below 150 million for the first time in the 21st century. In 2023, the figure increased to 123.62 million. But that is still less than the 176 million tickets sold in 2019, before the coronavirus outbreak. Meanwhile, the average cost of a movie ticket in the UK reached an all-time high in 2023: 7.92 pounds, up from the 7.69-pound average reported the previous year.
British blockbusters
The highest-grossing film at the box office in the UK in 2023 was "Barbie", the live action adaptation of the famous doll. The British co-production with the United States grossed 87 million pounds at the box office in the UK, more than "Oppenheimer" and "The Super Mario Bros. Movie", which came in second and third positions respectively. When it comes to the commercial success of British movies overseas, however, there is still a long way to go after the pandemic. In 2023, British films grossed approximately 6.1 billion U.S. dollars worldwide, more than four billion dollars less than the 10.3-billion-dollar global box office revenue recorded in 2019.