U.K. Box Office Back to Full Health — But What Lessons Do We Learn?

It really is the year of original voices at the box office.

Cinema-going in the U.K. and Ireland is currently up 21 percent on 2025. “We haven’t had year-on-year growth like that since the pandemic,” began Charles Gant, Screen International‘s box office editor, who was hosting a BFI London Film Festival Industry Forum session with cinema programmers on Thursday morning.

He was joined by reps for three major players in the country’s theatrical market: Curzon’s head of cinema programme Ben Lyndon, the director of programming at Picturehouse Carol McKay, and programme manager at BFI IMAX Madeleine Mullett. The panel reflected on the state of cinema-going in the U.K., shared insights into audiences’ behaviours and discussed how the lessons learned from recent releases can shape their future programmes, both with mainstream and indie features.

Like our friends across the pond, British and Irish audiences have responded well to such a vast array of genres on offer, with musical films (Michael, Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger), beloved franchise sequels (Toy Story 5, Devil Wears Prada 2, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Practical Magic 2), period adaptations (Wuthering Heights, Sense and Sensibility) and big, auteur-made movies (The Odyssey, Disclosure Day) solidifying 2026 as the year we bounced back, finally, post-pandemic.

But the biggest takeaway? Original voices have never been so enticing to new audiences. “If we look at the five years previous to this [and] you look at the top 20 films in each of those years,” began Lyndon, “you’ll find, on average, less than five original films in that top 20. Compared to 2026, there are currently 12 original films inside that top 20. It isn’t [entirely] an audience shift,” he added, “but 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.”

Lyndon conceded that Disney’s Avengers: Doomsday will, of course, go bananas at the box office, particularly because there’s been a substantial amount of time since the last Avengers outing. But surprise hits like Obsession, Project Hail Mary or The Invite have made this year an especially buoying one for the cinephiles among us.

The Curzon programmer gave “credit where it’s due” to A24, who released Kane Parsons’ Backrooms. The horror feature, starring Renate Reinsve and Chiwetel Ejiofor, grossed £4.3 million ($5.7m) in its opening weekend in the U.K. and Ireland, setting a record for the highest-ever debut for an original horror film and giving A24 its best opening weekend in the region.

Lyndon said: “They’re the kind of major player now in that they’re not a provisional Hollywood studio. They’re still an independent studio, but [they are] overconfident about their own brand. We have to give them credit where it’s due. They have rejuvenated a space that was struggling after the pandemic — these mid-range films, a lot of which were going to streaming — but the hype that they’re able to generate online is driving customers back towards the cinema.”

Another key topic of discussion at the box office panel was PLFs (Premium Large Formats), with Mullett beaming about the year that IMAX is having. (London’s BFI IMAX, which seats around 500, is the number one IMAX screen globally at the 2026 box office — out of over 1,800 IMAX screens around the world.)

Much of the BFI IMAX’s success has been driven by the record-breaking Odyssey, which swiftly became the biggest opening weekend box office result of any IMAX venue in the U.K. and abroad upon its July release. Mullett explained that this audience shift around PLFs can be traced back to Nolan’s award-sweeping Oppenheimer in 2023. “Nolan did a wonderful trick by doing Oppenheimer, because ultimately that’s a drama about a nuclear physicist in IMAX. On paper, if that wasn’t Christopher Nolan, would that have got greenlit?” she asked, prompting chuckles from the audience.

“Once Oppenheimer came, it was what was popular,” continued Mullett, “and you had an audience understanding dramatic stories and storytelling in various formats.” It meant that these features could straddle two kinds of theaters: both the wide-reaching multiplexes and the indies that support auteur-driven filmmaking. “I think Sinners wouldn’t have been made if Oppenheimer didn’t have [its] success with all the accolades and the awards,” she continued. “Then once Sinners came in, there was a massive understanding — Ryan Coogler was talking directly to audiences about format and filmmaking, then Project Hail Mary got delivered on the cellulose format ultimately because of Sinners and the success of One Battle After Another. Again, [these are] films that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with IMAX five, 10 years ago. It’s a real shift in perspective and a real shift in audiences, but it’s pretty valuable,” she added.

That being said, Lyndon confessed to arguing with a specific distributor “right now” over trailers being delivered to non-PLF theaters telling audiences: “Experience it in IMAX.” He said: “There’s a certain level of investment going into a film to market it, which justifies very high terms, but that’s pushing customers away from our screens. Then it’s hard to justify paying those costs.”

Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey are, so far, the defining films of the 2026 box office for British and Irish audiences, having accrued a cool £99.8m and £87.1m, respectively. McKay said about Nolan’s three-hour epic: “It’s our number four film of all time. It’s already crept into the top 10 of all time. And I think that is because Nolan is a proper filmmaker. […] People just want to see his films, and that’s fantastic for us. And everybody should be able to see a film like that on a large screen with other people that are like-minded. I couldn’t think of anything better.”

But the seeds were sown years ago — maybe with Oppenheimer, according to Mullett — for an almighty return this year, albeit this is all before the suspected “awards-bunching” toward the holidays. What all three cinema programming heads agreed on is that the dominoes are now falling hard and fast. Long may that continue.

The 70th BFI London Film Festival runs Oct. 7-18.