Admissions have continued to drop since 2005 in Spain (47 million less admissions in 6 years).
The Spanish market
Although the decrease is less disturbing in 2011, the market nevertheless lost 3.2% of admissions (98.3 million) and 4% of revenues (635.8 million). Despite a rise in admissions during the final quarter, Spain did not manage to curb the loss of interest shown by spectators for watching films in theaters. The number of screens has also noticeably decreased, passing from 4080 to 4044. More than 40% of these theaters have been converted to digital and 887 screens are now in 3D. 59% of theaters include more than one screen. The country virtually no longer has any arthouse theaters and the operator of the Cine Renoir chain has closed several of its theaters. Only two Spanish theaters are members of the CICAE - Confédération internationale des cinémas d'art et d'essai. The Top 10 is essentially composed of American films, but we note that the first place in the ranking is held by a national production, Torrente 4, which registered 2.63 million admissions thanks to a 3D release.
In such a worrying context, Spanish cinema's market share picked up in 2011, reaching 15.8%, being 3.5% more than in 2010. However, this good result is essentially due to a single film which registered 20% of Spanish film admissions. It was a very good year for Spanish film exports, with international revenues representing the double of national revenues, and 30 million spectators.
American cinema's market share dropped below 70% and France claimed 4.4% of global admissions. In terms of VoD, Netflix was expected to arrive in Spain at the beginning of 2012, but it finally launched its European operations in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia. Imagenio and Orange are the two leaders of this market, in IPTV, whereas other platforms, such as Filmin, manage to give independant cinema of all nationalities visibility by constituting communities in a niche market.
Distributor rankings once again show that the major companies dominate, occupying the 6 top places.
French cinema
With 59 French films, 4.3 million admissions and a 4.4% market share, French cinema is doing relatively well in a market undergoing a crisis.
Majority French productions were favored with almost 57% of overall results. All up, including films continuing runs from 2010, 65 French films were on Spanish screens. Among the majority French productions, 5 films registered 100,000 admissions or more. Heading the list, we find Little White Lies and Of Gods and Men with 278,000 and 248,000 admissions respectively. They're followed by Arthur and the War of the Two Worlds (137,000 admissions), The Artist (135,000 admissions after fifteen days in theaters), and lastly Sarah's KeySarah's Key (100,000 entrées). With regard to French productions in a foreign language, Unknown, and The Three Musketeers hold the first 3 spots.
Some films such as Farewell (85,000 admissions) and White Material (56,000 admissions) provided pleasant surprises, while others didn't achieve expected results: Nothing to Declare, The War of the Buttons (II), and Beautiful Lies.
The Spanish market comprises twenty distributors loyal to French cinema, but Golem Distribución is the most active, with the release of 10 films. It is followed by Alta Films and Karma Films with 8 films. Lastly, after entering the distributor Top 5 in 2010, A Contracorriente Films, who released Little White Lies and Farewell continues to progress with the release of 5 films.
Despite the good results yet again in 2011, the market remains fragile. The difficulty, indeed the impossibility, of selling films to Spanish television channels, along with pirating which has killed the DVD market and is undermining VoD circuits, and operators who leave little hope for films in theaters mean that independent distributors suffer terribly from a competitively slumping market for upcoming films.
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