We will have to continue waiting for at least one more year. And there are two about the first forecasts as soon as the confinement ended in 2020. Twelve months ago, the news was that the expected recovery, according to the most optimistic (or even realistic) of the forecasts after the pandemic, was postponed until 2023. That is, for right now. Well no, it will have to be in 2024 (or 2025).
If in 2019, the best of the decade, cinemas in Spain grossed 624 million, right now The figure is 485 according to provisional data from the firm in charge of counting entries Comscore Movies. This means, as contradictory as it may seem, that progress is being made adequately, or in the right direction, but not at the desirable pace. Not even expected. The figure, according to all indicators, is good considering that the sector went through a strike of actors and scriptwriters that lasted six months and that delayed some of its most popular premieres (Dune II to the head). But not only that. Even more serious is the crisis suffered by the genre that has determined the box office in recent years (superheroes in all their forms) and that, at the moment, knows no possibility of being canceled. And with everything, and with the phenomenon Barbenheimer (due to the simultaneous premiere of Barbieas a true phenomenon, and Oppenheimer) as a light and guide was left in 23% delay compared to the average of the last five years before we went home due to Covid. Last year at this time the negative percentage was 40%. That is, bad news, but without overwhelming.
When it comes to Spanish cinema, however, it seems more complicated to find excuses. The almost mythological screen share (the percentage of Spanish cinema seen in relation to the other) plummeted to 16% with a global figure and always according to provisional counts of 78.5 (lower than in 2022). You have to go back a decade ago to find a lower record (then it was 13.8%). Only Campeonex, by Javier Fesser, sneaks into the Top 10 of the most viewed films. It does so in position number 8 with a collection of close to 12 million. A symptomatic fact of the poor performance of local production is that a film like The beastsby Rodrigo Sorogoyen, remains in seventh place among the highest-grossing films, being a film from a year ago, from 2022.
And what happened? Is all this a symptom of something? David Rodríguez, general manager of Comscore Movies, subscribes to the economic (or even Buddhist) theory that “what is not seen is much more important and determining than what is seen.” Iceberg theory, he calls it. «The question that must be asked is what would have happened if with the summer success of Barbenheimer there would have been no strike of actors and scriptwriters. We are not aware of what the phenomenon has meant. This summer has been the second best in grossing and the third in viewers of the last decade. People returned to the cinema completely oblivious to the fears of the pandemic. It seemed that, finally, everything was over,” he reasons just before lamenting that when it doesn’t rain, it hails. It could not be.
Be that as it may, there is one piece of information that does not allow for counteroffers or pessimism. As Francis Ford Coppola himself began to cry out at the time, what is relevant is that neither the film about the doll signed by Greta Gerwig nor that about the atomic physicist by Christopher Nolan are productions that continue anything nor do they belong to any family. “This is important,” continues Rodríguez. «The big studios had been betting safely on one sequel after another for too long, blocked by the possibility of anything that seemed new. “The trend has been broken and that is good,” concludes. In fact, to the almost 1.5 billion dollars harvested worldwide by Barbie they follow him Super Mario Bros and the aforementioned Oppenheimer. Yes, two of them are derivatives of toys with brands like Mattel and Nintendo as inspiration, but they are not franchises in the strict sense. It’s something.