After the near stoppage in 2020, due to the covid-19 pandemic, and a timid resumption in 2021, still under the strong impact of the health crisis of the new coronavirus, movie theaters in Brazil returned to receive a considerable audience last year.
Preliminary sector data, released by the National Film Agency (Ancine), show an 82% increase in the 2022 audience, compared to the previous year, with 95.1 million people. In income, the increase was 98.8%, reaching R$ 1.8 billion.
Compared to 2019, the reference year before the pandemic, 2022 saw a 46.5% drop in attendance and a 35.4% drop in total income. In the evolution of the number of exhibition rooms, 2022 (3,401 rooms) came close to the level of 2019 (3,507 rooms). In 2020, Ancine registered 1,860 rooms in operation and in 2021 the number jumped to 3,266.
The agency points out that the participation of Brazilian films was below average, with 4.2% of the public and 3.9% of income. However, there was an improvement compared to 2021, when national participation represented only 1.8% of the box office. Last year, the five most watched Brazilian films at the cinema were Monica’s Gang: Lessonswith an audience of 542.6 thousand people, I’m rich! two (515.2 thousand), Blue Building Detectives 3 (424.6 thousand), Provisional Measure (407.4 thousand) and Eduardo and Monicawhich attracted 389,000 people.
According to Ancine, the numbers were well below the last national blockbuster, the record holder My mom is a 3 piece, released at the end of 2019, which in less than a month was seen by 8.6 million viewers and reached a box office of R$ 137.8 million. The previous record was My Mother is a Piece 2from 2016, with an audience of 9.2 million people and collection of R$ 124.6 million.
Blockbusters
Last year, the cinema market was dominated by major international releases. The most watched movies in 2022 were Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (8.3 million people), Minions 2: The Origin of Gru (6.9 million), Avatar: the way of water (6.7 million), Thor: Love and Thunder (6.3 million) and batmanwhich had an audience of 5.8 million in movie theaters.
In total, the movie theaters showed 652 feature films last year, 244 of which were Brazilian and 408 were foreign. Releases totaled 385 feature films, with 173 Brazilians and 212 foreigners, and seven films were released in more than 2,000 theaters, compared to just two in 2021.
In view of the improvement in the general scenario, Ancine points out that the expectation for 2023 is an increase in the participation of national films in the market, in addition to the growth of the exhibition park, a trajectory interrupted by the pandemic after ten years of increase.
To this end, the agency highlights the six public calls for the Audiovisual Sectoral Fund (FSA) already completed, which invests in Brazilian films for cinema, in addition to the launch of two new ones and the approval of a new investment action plan for 2023.
