«Mathematics make Mexican exhibitors good: In 11 of the 12 weekends that the year has recorded so far, the barrier of two million tickets sold has been exceeded, being more than half of what was registered in the pre-pandemic.
Until before the arrival of COVID-19, theaters on the weekend averaged 4.5 million occupied seats; In this 2023, 2.4 million are averaged, according to figures from the National Chamber of the Film Industry (Canacine).
“In the past we exceeded 2.6 million, that is always the key and it already looks like good behavior, we believe that it will continue to rise and surely by the end of the year we will be (at the general box office) at 80% of what we had in the pre-pandemic” , considers Tábata Vilar Villa, director of the Chamber.
Most important of all, he says, is that more and more studios and streaming platforms turn to see the big screen as a necessary window.
During 2021, titles like “Cruella” and “Black Widow” were released mainly online and some in parallel releases.
Right now on the billboard, exclusively, there are the most recent installments of sagas such as “Creed”, “Scream” and “John Wick”, as well as franchises that hope to raise good numbers such as “Dungeons and Dragons”.
“This heated discussion that the cinema was going to end is no longer. They (studios) are increasingly convinced that the business model cannot stop exploiting something at different times, generating wealth in the first window (theaters) should not be skipped, now the billboard is quite complete”, he expresses .
What did change during the pandemic, Vilar Villa points out, was the period between a commercial run in theaters and its arrival on streaming: from 90 days that it was handled, it was reduced to 45 days, depending on the agreements.
Regarding Mexican films, he celebrates the decision of “¡Que viva México!!, directed by Luis Estrada, which came out with more than 3,000 screens and during its first four days of exhibition it registered more than 300,000 attendees.
Remember that the first big numbers of the year were provided by the comedy “Unhappy forever”, starring Consuelo Duval and Adrián Uribe, which accounted for about 1.8 million viewers.
“It was like the return of that entertainment cinema for the entire public, which was on the canvas with the pandemic,” he says.
The Chamber, together with the CCC and ENAC schools, the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences and the Mexican Association of Filmmakers, held the first Film Boot Camp, seeking to attract new audiovisual talent.
Under the sponsorship of the Motion Pictures Association, in alliance with EFD, Casazul and Procine, among others, it is sought that more people can join the audiovisual labor market, with certification involved.
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