Ever since lockdowns began to be lifted — it seems like eons ago — and theaters began to creep back into regular operation, we’ve been poring over box office and attendance reports for signs of the long-awaited “new normal.” Now, after the positive trend in March, April’s data has left us with figures worthy of celebration which, in addition, represent the best month so far in 2022.
April closed its Spanish cinematographic journey with a total collection of 32.1 million euros obtained from 5.04 million viewers. Numbers that exceed 147% those of the same month of 2021, in which 2.2 million tickets were sold, which represented an amount of 13.5 million euros.
The premieres dominate the podium
However, what invites hope and points to a clear full revival —or almost— of the industry is to take a look at the top with the most watched feature films of the month; whose first three positions are occupied by premieres of the month of April, starting with a ‘Fantastic Animals: The secrets of Dumbledore’ that closed the year with 7.2 million euros in his pocket.
After her, ‘Sonic 2: The movie’ surprised with a not inconsiderable €6.06 million, opening an important gap with his immediate pursuer; a ‘Morbius’ released on the 1st and that added a total of 4.37 million euros in four weeks —Something better than expected by many, but disappointing if we take into account the numbers of ‘Venom: There will be Carnage’ or, especially, ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’.
The ranking with the five highest-grossing feature films in April is closed by the fun ‘The bad guys’, released in mid-March and which added in other €2.6 millionand ‘The Lost City’, which arrived in our theaters on April 13 and managed to close the month with 2.06 million harvested. Nothing, but nothing bad.
Sony vs Warner
With regard to market share by distributors, despite the relative success of ‘Fantastic Animals’, Sony took the biggest slice of the pie with 26.9%, with ‘Uncharted’ being its most commercial feature film. In second position, with 22.5%, would be Warner Bros., whose latest Wizarding World movie was overshadowed by ‘The Batman’ that continued to wage war despite having been released in early March.
Everything stated above invites optimism, especially if we take into account that ‘Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness’ has debuted in our theaters with an unbelievable 5.5 million eurosand that May will bring under his arm titles that could give the occasional bell like ‘Fire Eyes’, ‘Everything at the same time everywhere’, ‘Jujutsu Kaisen 0’ or, of course, the great candidate to outshine Marvel Studios: ‘Top Gun: Maverick’.