Gross revenue of the filmed entertainment market in the UK 2016-2021, by platform

In 2021, the gross revenue of the filmed entertainment market in the United Kingdom amounted to approximately 3.56 billion British pounds, up from the 3.28-billion-pound revenue recorded a year earlier. While the turnover of the theatrical subsegment increased to 542 million pounds, the revenue of the pay TV market decreased to more than less than 850 billion pounds that same year. Meanwhile, the revenue of UK's film industry amounted to 20.49 billion pounds in 2021.

The slow recovery of British cinemas

Movie theaters across the UK continued to struggle to fully recover their finances after the COVID-19 outbreak. In 2022, the British box office gross amounted to 902 million pounds, a sharp increase in comparison to the previous year. Yet the figure still was under the 1.25-billion-pound box office revenue recorded in 2019. Similarly, the number of movie tickets sold in the UK grew in 2022, standing above 117 million. But that amounted to about 60 million admissions less than recorded in 2019.

A movie star on the global stage

Despite the slow recovery, the UK remains a solid film market. In 2021, it recorded the fourth biggest box office revenue worldwide, at around 800 million dollars, tying with France. The British cinema industry is also one of the pillars of an even larger market: Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). Since the pandemic, that region's box office gross surpassed the United States and Canada, collectively known as the North American movie market. That was the first time this happened since 2014.