Cinema-going in the UK and Ireland is running 21 percent ahead of last year, the strongest annual growth since the pandemic. Programmers at the BFI London Film Festival say the surprise is what audiences are choosing: 12 of the year’s top 20 films are originals.
Cinema-going in the United Kingdom and Ireland is up 21 percent on 2025, The Hollywood Reporter reported from the BFI London Film Festival.
“We haven’t had year-on-year growth like that since the pandemic,” said Charles Gant, box office editor of Screen International, who hosted an industry session on Thursday, October 8.
Originals in the Lead
The most striking finding concerned original films, meaning those not based on an existing franchise.
Ben Lyndon, head of cinema programme at the Curzon chain, said that over the previous five years the annual top 20 contained, on average, fewer than five original films.
In 2026 so far, there are 12.
“Perhaps these franchises have been mined a bit too heavily and customers need a bit of respite, and studios need to pace these out a bit more,” he said.
What Audiences Have Been Watching
The Hollywood Reporter listed a wide range of successes this year:
- Music films: Michael; Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger
- Franchise sequels: Toy Story 5, Devil Wears Prada 2, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Practical Magic 2
- Period adaptations: Wuthering Heights, Sense and Sensibility
- Director-led blockbusters: The Odyssey, Disclosure Day
Surprise hits named by the panel included Obsession, Project Hail Mary and The Invite.
A Record for A24
Lyndon singled out the distributor A24 and its horror film Backrooms, directed by Kane Parsons.
The film took £4.3 million ($5.7 million) in its opening weekend in the UK and Ireland. That is the highest debut on record for an original horror film, and A24’s best opening weekend in the region.
“They have rejuvenated a space that was struggling after the pandemic — these mid-range films, a lot of which were going to streaming,” Lyndon said.
The IMAX Effect
Premium large-format screens were another theme.
London’s BFI IMAX, which has around 500 seats, is the number one IMAX screen in the world at the 2026 box office, out of more than 1,800 globally.
Much of that is down to Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, released in July.
Madeleine Mullett, programme manager at BFI IMAX, traced the change in audience habits back to Nolan’s Oppenheimer in 2023. “Ultimately that’s a drama about a nuclear physicist in IMAX,” she said. After it, she argued, audiences came to accept dramatic storytelling in large formats.
Franchises Are Not Finished
None of this means the end of the blockbuster sequel. Lyndon said he expects Disney’s Avengers: Doomsday to perform very strongly, partly because of the long gap since the last Avengers film.
Image: The BFI IMAX cinema at Waterloo, London (file photo, 2023). Photo by Matt Brown via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
