Although household consumption continues to fall amid the real economic situation of slowdownColombian spending on entertainment activities, such as going to the movies, is maintained.
At least that is what the sector’s statistics show, which indicate that in the first half of the year the assistance of people to the different cinemas of the country grew close to 50 percent with respect to the same period of the previous year.
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Figures for this market, provided by the Cadbox portal, owned by the Colombian Association of Film Distributors (ACDPD) indicate that in the first six months of 2023 close to 29.5 million people went to a movie theater of the country, about 10 million more than those registered in the same period last year.
The same entity points out that the box office that will end that assistance in the first half of the year exceeded 360,122 million pesosApril being the month with the highest collection in that period, with 86,575 million; and February with the lowest, with 37,689 million.
But those are not the only figures that show the return of Colombians to the cinema. According to what was commented by Munir Falah, president of Cine Colombia on his Twitter account, public attendance at movie theaters between Thursday, July 20, and Sunday, July 23 It would have been the second highest in the history of the country.
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According to the manager, it is estimated that this massive attendance brought together around 1.83 million people in the different cinemas of the country. Until now, according to Falah, that historical record is still held by the more than 1.98 million viewers who attended a movie theater between April 25 and Sunday, April 28, 2019.
The difference between the two periods is only about 150,000 viewers, according to data provided by the president of Cine Colombia.
The figures are quite indicative of this marketif it is taken into account that these only contemplate cinema attendance in a minimum period of three days.
In industry data, April was the month with the highest attendance with close to 7 million viewers, while February, with just over 3.2 million, was the one with the lowest attendance.
The movies
An attendee points to her Barbenheimer T-shirt outside the convention center during San Diego Comic-Con International in San Diego, California on July 20, 2023.
Gives cinemas a rosy breather, after the weak results of Mission Impossible and Indiana Jones
The massive attendance at movie theaters is motivated, among other factors, by the phenomenon called ‘Barbenheimer’, a term coined to indicate the simultaneous premiere in the world, including Colombia, of two films of totally opposite genres.
According to Pía Barragán, Cine Colombia Distribution Manager, said film “gross 337 million dollars worldwide and gives theaters a rosy breather, after the weak results of Mission Impossible and Indiana Jones,” he wrote on his Twitter account.
He ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon It began a circular ahead of the simultaneous release of the Barbie films, a Greta Gerwig-directed comedy about the famous fashion doll of the same name, and Oppenheimer, the biographical thriller written and directed by Christopher Nolan about physicist Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan Project, who developed the first nuclear weapons during World War II. This term is the fusion of those two words.
The Cadbox figures also indicate that in the first half of 2023, 28 Colombian feature films were released in movie theaters in the country, four more than in the same period of 2022, for which we received incentives through a contest from the Fund for Cinematographic Development.
(Also read: Barbie: doll sales skyrocket 200% in Colombia)
household spending falls
Colombian families had to reduce the size of the basket with which they market.
Getty Images / CEET Archive
The massive attendance at the cinema that shows the figures of the Colombian market in the first months of the year contrasts with those that show how Household spending in the country expanded eight months downward in Juneaccording to what was reported by the consulting firm Raddar, which indicates that for the sixth month of 2023 said consumption fell by 4 percent, reaching 80.8 billion pesos.
Of total household spending in the sixth month of the year, 4.68 percent went to entertainment, a share that is declining, according to the Raddar report.
The same report shows that for every 100 pesos, Colombians spent 5.8 pesos on entertainment. Food for the home and housing are the items that account for the most household budgets in the country: 31.2 and 23.9 percent, respectively.
And compared to last May, entertainment was one of the items to which the least budget resources were allocated in June, only 0.03 percent, precisely the consulting firm.
