After surging back from the pandemic with a 16% growth in 2023, France’s box office continued to grow in 2024 with €1.36 billion ($1.41 billion) grossed from 183.1 million admissions sold, a 0.5% year-on rise, according to Comscore and the National Film Board (CNC).
While the increase may appear modest, it nevertheless solidifies France as Europe’s healthiest theatrical market, and one that shows the biggest signs of post-COVID recovery even in a year that saw the country host the Olympic Games. Elsewhere in Europe (including in the U.K., Germany, Italy and Spain), ticket sales dipped in 2024, per Comscore France.
The market share of French movies reached 44.4% compared to 36.7% for American movies, according to the CNC, which notes that “it’s one of the highest level for local releases ever recorded.”
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A wide-ranging duo of French movies beat Hollywood heavyweights to take the first two slots of this year’s box office chart: “A Little Something Extra” (“Un p’tit truc en plus”), a heartwarming French comedy helmed by and starring comedian Artus alongside a cast of non-professional actors with disabilities which sold more than 10.8 million admissions and was released by indie distributor Pan-Europeene, followed by “The Count of Monte Cristo,” a sweeping three-hour epic adventure film adapted from Alexandre Dumas’ classic, directed by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patellière (“The Three Musketeers”) which sold more than 9.4 million tickets and was released by Pathé.
A third French movie shows up in the top 5, “Beating Hearts” (“L’Amour Ouf”), a music-filled crime romance directed by Gilles Lellouche which sold 4.8 million tickets and marked Studiocanal’s biggest investment in a local movie to date with a budget of €32 million.
Unlike “,” both “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “Beating Hearts” world premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews and boasted bankable stars with large fanbases, from Pierre Niney (in “Monte Cristo”) to Adele Exarchopoulos and Francois Civil (in “Beating Hearts”).
Those three local movies sold a cumulated 25 million admissions, breaking a 10-year record for France that was last matched in 2014, says Comscore France’s Eric Marti. As the analyst points out, it’s worth noting that unlike in 2014 — when the highest-grossing French-produced movies were broad comedies like “Serial (Bad) Weddings,” Dany Boon’s “Supercondriaque” and Luc Besson’s action sci-fi thriller “Lucy” starring Scarlett Johansson — local crowds in 2024 flocked theaters to see a film with a disabled cast, a three-hour costume movie and an American-style love story that also lasts nearly three hours.
The French box office was also largely bolstered by Disney tentpoles “Inside Out 2” and “Moana 2,” which sold 8.4 million and 6.7 million tickets, respectively, and rank third and fourth at the box office, followed by “Despicable Me 4” and “Dune 2” in the sixth and seventh slots.
“We’re seeing that it’s the synergy between French and American films that sparked this upward trend during the second half of 2024, and led to such a dynamic theatrical market,” says Marti, adding that Comscore had anticipated a weaker year due to due to a scarcity of American films, with initial estimates projecting a total of 175 million admissions for 2024, but the June release of “Inside Out 2” proved to be a tipping point.
“We were initially concerned about a decline in American film releases due to Hollywood’s double strike, but ultimately we saw a good number of U.S. movies perform well and they played a critical role in the box office’s growth,” Marti says, noting that two more Disney movies, “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” “ultimately performed well.”
The French box office is slowly catching up to pre-pandemic levels — it’s still 12.8% down on 2019. Per Comscore, other countries are still lagging behind in terms of ticket sales, for instance Germany, which is 17% down on the 2017-2019 average, as well as Italy and Spain which are 19% and 22% down, respectively.
“Today, French cinema knows how to do it all: all genres and all stories, for all audiences. It’s the diversity and uniqueness of our works — historical drama, generational stories, musicals, social comedies, documentaries, animated films — that explain the rebound in overall attendance and the unrivaled market share of our national films worldwide,” says Olivier Henrard, the acting president of the CNC.
Referring to France’s wealth of incentives and subsidies contributing to the development and financing of local movies, Henrard says these box office results are the “best proof of the artistic and industrial excellence of our model of cultural exception.”