Can Ireland still claim to be among the most cinema-friendly countries on the planet? That has long been the contention. In 2017, a report from the International Union of Cinemas had the nation tied with France for highest per-capita attendance in Europe. With France? That’s akin to tying with the Netherlands at being tall.
Recent news on cinema attendance suggests the legend is still worth repeating. The Spend Trend report from AIB tells us that, in May, overall spending on entertainment was up 6 per cent on the same month in 2025. The figure was significantly boosted by an increase of 53 per cent in cinema sales. That is good news for Irish cinemas, but surely that’s largely down to the success of two titles: Michael and The Devil Wears Prada 2. People are also flocking to the Michael Jackson biopic in Skopje and to the fashionista sequel in Bratislava. Right?
Steady on. There’s more. Screen International reports that combined UK and Ireland takings in May are up by just 19 per cent on the year before. That is a happy result, particularly as May 2025 bested May 2024 by 50 per cent in the combined box office, but there remains a sense that punters here are flocking back at a greater rate than those across the Irish Sea.
And they’re not just going to see the Jackson and Prada flicks. May was also remarkable (as reported in this column a few weeks ago) for the unprecedented success of two low-budget horror flicks. Curry Barker’s Obsession, produced for less than $1 million, and Kane Parsons’s Backrooms, budgeted at around $10 million, have clocked up, respectively, more than $290 million and $250 million worldwide.
READ MORE
Alice Black, head of cinema for the Light House Group, which runs the venue of that name in Smithfield in Dublin, acknowledges that, even in the traditional post-Oscar trough, audiences showed little reluctance to leave the couch.
“It was the highest May we’ve ever had, but we also had the highest April,” she says. “We’ve seen no slowdown since the awards period, which is really unusual. Normally, springtime would be a real dearth.”
Cinemas usually hold their breath in expectation of the summer blockbuster.
“This year that hasn’t happened at all. It hasn’t slowed down.”
One lesson of the appropriately fecund spring is that distributors need not aim their titles at any one age group. The audience for The Devil Wears Prada 2 reaches from Zoomers catching up with retro fashion right up to younger Boomers who, as near contemporaries of Meryl Streep, identify with her character’s raging against the dumbing down of contemporary media. Fans who remember Michael Jackson’s hits landing in the 1980s have bravely left their gated communities to enjoy them again in a public place.
Meanwhile, a film such as Backrooms draws a significant portion of its audience, at least at first, from younger punters aware of the YouTube video series that inspired it. (One might cheekily add that The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, currently the biggest hit of the year, has been playing well with those under the age of 10.)
Audiences of all ages will still turn out for the right film. The BFI Imax, the huge screen operated by the British Film Institute in London, has sold a record-breaking 28,000 tickets in 24 hours for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which doesn’t open until July 17th. There is a film that will appeal across the ages.
[ So the Odyssey trailer has upset you. Shut up and stop whingingOpens in new window ]
But why do the Irish consistently come out in larger numbers?
“I have this theory,” Black says. “There are so many people who are still living at home. The housing crisis means people need to get out of their house, because they’re living in housing shares or living with their parents. There’s a younger audience that is willing to spend on cinema or willing to spend on restaurants and bars.”
There has long been a notion that the Irish market skewed female. Barbie became, in 2023, the highest-grossing film of all time in this nation. Bridget Jones’s Baby, despite landing at only number 39 in the worldwide chart for 2016, took more money here than any other film that year. The excellent Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy – eerily, again at 39 worldwide in 2025 – was just behind A Minecraft Movie as the second-biggest film in Ireland last year.
Draw what conclusions you wish about Irish women and their commendable loyalty to the seventh art. The wider moral of this busy spring is that those habitual obituarists for theatrical exhibition can set their black-bordered notepaper aside for another month or so. Cinema survived telly. It survived VHS. It survived video games. It may yet survive whatever it is facing today.
