In their words, here is the SA Box Office Report, as released by National Film and Video Foundation Policy and Research Department .
1. South Africa’s Box Office
The first half of 2014 has been quite competitive with animation versus live-action films (some titles available in 3D) enjoying booming popularity at the box office. Thus, South African films had to compete with the likes of “Amazing Spider-Men”, “Rio 2”, “X-Men: Days of Future Past” etc. However, the first six months of 2014 have seen a distinct improvement in gross box office for local productions from the previous six months of 2013. The total box office for local productions showed a notable increase of 43% climbing to R33 million, up from R23 million. This goes to show that even though consumers are faced with high ticket prices, as well as rising petrol costs and food prices they are still able to leave provision for entertainment and go out with their families to watch movies.
2. Overview: Box Office
A total of 111 films were released at box office from 3 January to 28 June 2014. A large share of the 111 titles were distributed by Ster Kinekor (47), and Times Media (39). The highest grossing release was Amazing Spider Man 2 which earned R21.8 million, followed by Rio 2 (R21.1 million), and X-Men: Days of Future Past with box office takings of R16.9 million.
12 local films were released in the first half of 2014, an increase of 20% from 10 titles released last year (2013). The remaining 99 films were all foreign films, thus it is not surprising to note that foreign films dominate the box office and are usually well received by the audience.
On average 2 South African (SA) titles were released from January to June. As expected a summer peak can be observed in March (with 3 titles) and April (with 4 titles) which suddenly drops in winter with fewer releases in the month of May (1 title) and June (none). However, it should be noted that we do not a full winter1 period as the data ends in June.
February had the highest earnings with almost R13 million recorded for that month, a 65% higher than February 2013. The very high figure in February month was due to the popularity of Pad Na Jou Hart which earned more than R11 million on its own and The Perfect Wave which only took R1.1 million. Even though there were quite few more titles released in April they did not generate much revenue as expected. The two films that earned more than a million were Konfetti (R2.5 million) and iNumber Number (R1.8 million) in that month.
South Africa has experienced quite a significant growth when observing only the revenues generated by local productions that were on circuit in the first half of 2014 compared to the first half of 2013. On aggregate, approximately R33 million was generated compared to R23 million taking in June 2013, an increase of 43 percent. Foreign gross on the other hand has dropped by 10% (from R385 million to 348 million) and the overall gross box office fell by 6% (from R408 million to R382 million).
The overall gross box office generated in the first six months of 2014 form January until June is estimated to be above R 382 million. In the same vein local productions amounted to R33 million taking 9%, an improvement from 5% attracted last year in the same period. Foreign productions took 91% of the market share.
Table 1 below shows the top local productions ranked on highest earning film at box office. The highest grossing local release was Pad Na Jou Hart which grossed over R11 million. Ek Joke Net 2, the pranksters were back for round two and this time performed quite disappointing compared to 2011 release of the first instalment of the comedy film. The film took R695k, 38% down from R1.2 million release in 2011. The least performing local films were The Forgotten Kingdom, the first film produced in and about Lesotho in Sesotho language did not do well at box office with only R232k. Elelwani, the first Tshivenda language film to be made in SA also earned itself R290k at box office.
It is always anticipated that the opening weekend has a much higher inflation than the following weekends which will then determine the success or failure of the film. This leads to two plausible theories: 1) There’s much more press about opening-weekend results than other weekends, therefore distributors have more reason to inflate the first weekend than following weekends, or 2) The first weekend is inherently the least predictable, and in cases of uncertainty, distributors always choose to go with optimistic numbers.
Drama was the widely released genre between January and June with 25 titles, followed by Comedy with 11 title released this period, and Animation with 8 titles under this genre.
In terms of earnings by genre, Animation was the highest grossing genre with R72 million. Titles that contributed to this upsurge was RIO 2 which generated over R21 million on its own, as well as The Lego Movie and Mr. Peabody & Sherman both earned more than R9 million each. In second place was the Action/Adventure grossing R70 million; and Drama took the third place with R59 million. Observing at the same period last year (June 2013) Action, Animation and Action/Adventure were the top grossing genres. These are the top three genres that seem to be mostly enjoyed by the audience at the moment and have earned fairly well at box office.
3. Conclusion
There have not been major highlights or any new trends that have emerged during this period. It is therefore important for filmmakers to continue striving towards the production of more local content and try to reach more audience. The basic principle still stands; making the right content available at the right price on the right platform and that will encourage or attract a larger audience. It is important to take into account the new platforms of accessing films which filmmakers should also exploit to distribute their films.
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Very interesting!
You can read the full report HERE