The walls of Barcelona’s international convention center might soon rattle once the 4,000 European exhibitors, suppliers and service providers in town for thetrade show breathe out a collective sigh of relief. At the root of such succor are Europe’s more than encouraging box-office admissions, which saw a marked uptick in late 2022 and have continued to rise into the new year.
“I think this edition will be very much about celebrating because 2022 was a much better year than 2021,” says Laura Houlgatte, CEO of the Intl. Union of Cinemas , which tends to the needs of cinema trade associations and exhibitors across the old continent. “[What’s more] the numbers for the first quarter of 2023 have left everyone in a very good mood.”
Organized by the Film Expo Group, and running from June 19 – 22, the Barcelona-based trade show will bring together operators and exhibitors from a diverse set of territories all lifted by the same rising tide. Whereas early 2023 admissions in Germany, Norway and Finland have come within percentage points of equivalent pre-pandemic figures, receipts in France, Austria and the Netherlands have all bested those 2017-2019 numbers by at least 2%.
While the robust performances of blockbusters like “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” certainly played a role — not least by pushing analysts from Gower Street to amend their 2023 global box office forecast by 10% this past April — Houlgatte also credits strong domestic slates in France, Germany and Finland as key drivers. “It is imperative to have a constant flow of content coming into our cinemas,” she adds. “We must make sure to avoid any empty months.
Summer slate presentations from Studiocanal, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, Universal, Paramount and Disney will hopefully see to that, alongside a handful of feature screenings still to be confirmed. Houlgatte tells Variety that from those upcoming slates, Universal’s “
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