Well, it’s official, we love the cinema more than just about everyone else in Europe.
We all already knew that the Irish are a big fan of heading to the movies – the bad weather kind of dictates it – but we actually equal with the French as the highest cinema-going per capital population in all of the EU.
According to new figures released by IHS Screen Digest show that 15.8 million tickets were sold in Ireland last year, up from 15.2 million in 2015.
This averages out at 3.3 cinema visits per person in Ireland, the highest in Europe along with France, and ahead of regular cinema attendee chart-toppers Spain, Denmark and the UK.
On top of that, the figures for the first four months of 2017 have been released, and they show that 4,708,218 tickets were sold in Ireland, a massive jump from the 4,057,828 during the same period last year.
Considering that the summer blockbuster season hasn’t kicked off properly yet, this is a sign that this year could be the biggest year in cinema going for the Irish population in quite some time.
The biggest hit of 2016 was Bridget Jones’ Baby, which banked €4.1 million in Ireland, and that has already been beaten this year by Beauty & The Beast, which has made €5.2 million since it was released in March.
The top ten of the year so far are as follows, but some of these are still making serious money in ticket sales at the time of publishing:
1. Beauty and The Beast – €5,205,694
2. Sing – €3,499,845
3. The Boss Baby – €2,551,882
4. The LEGO Batman Movie – €2,533,472
5. La La Land – €2,130,593
6. Fast & Furious 8 – €1,991,601
7. Logan – €1,865,264
8. Fifty Shades Darker – €1,848,200
9. Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 2 – €1,366,185
10. Kong: Skull Island – €1,352,908
This is the first time since 2008 that over 4.7 million tickets have been sold in the first third of the year, and we’ve still got a new Star Wars, Thor, Despicable Me, Spiderman, Planet Of The Apes, Wonder Woman, Transformers, Justice League, Pixar, Dunkirk, Pirates Of The Caribbean and Jumanji movies to go, and they’re just the ones we know for sure will be big.
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