Cinema admissions reached a post-lockdown record during the recent school holidays, with Val Morgan Cinema reaching a total of 4.15 million admits.
The result eclipsed the average admits in the last summer school holiday period by 37%, with a weekly average of 1.4 million Australians visiting the cinema.
The school holiday audience bump came off the back of the Easter long weekend and a returning content slate, with cinema enjoying its 4th consecutive week of over 1 million admits.
With family titles such as Peter Rabbit 2 and Tom & Jerry underpinning cinema’s growth trajectory — as well cinema’s recent biggest blockbuster, Godzilla Vs. Kong’s amassing a monster 1.39 million to date — the school holiday audience again showed that cinema is a place to build brands and connect with youth audiences.
Managing director of Val Morgan Cinema, Guy Burbidge, attributes the continued strong performance to the social and immersive nature of cinema, as well as a growing slate of quality content with even greater breadth than ever before.
“We are thrilled to see continuous audience growth within our cinema environments. With audiences eager for experiences outside of the home, Cinema once again is the place to escape, immerse and indulge on the biggest screen of all.”
Cinema is showing no signs of slowing down, with two years’ worth of content being released in the next eight months. Upcoming releases including Disney’s Cruella, Marvel’s Black Widow, Fast & Furious 9, and returning to screen 25 years on from the original installment, Space Jam 2, point to what is arguably the best future release slate for 2021 that cinema has seen.
Over the Easter period this year, Val Morgan Cinema saw the biggest week of audiences since January 2020. With over 1.6 million Australians visiting the cinema in the full week of 1-7 April 2021, 44% of these audiences were in the 18-39 demographic.