While the EU in general saw a rise of only 0.7% in attendance and 0.6% in box office, Poland continued to show healthy growth, with admissions up 11.4%, box office up 9.4%, and attendance for domestic films climbing to an impressive 27.1%. Only France and Denmark outshined Poland in domestic admissions. With per capita admissions finally hitting the 1.0 mark for the first time, Poland still has some room for growth.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, Slovenia had a stunning drop of -17.4% in admissions and -13.9% in box office. The domestic share of the market also fell, indicating that a decline in local blockbusters might account for the change. Admissions fell to 1.9m, down from 2.3m in 2013.
Croatia faced a similar situation, with a -9.7% drop in box office in admissions (at 3.8m), with the share for domestic films falling from 11.1% in 2013 to 2.5% in 2014.
In the Baltics, Lithuania saw a slight overall decline in admissions (-0.7%), but healthy growth in box office, which rose by 9.8%, while domestic films climbed to an impressive 23.1% share. Latvia saw small declines of -2.3% in admissions (-1.3% in box office) while domestic attendance rose slightly to 7.6%. Estonia’s admissions rose by 1.6% and box office climbed 8.0%, with a minimal downward shift in domestic film share at 4.7%.
In the Czech Republic, interest in domestic films continues to stagnate, reaching only 23.8% in 2014, a disappointing showing for a country that used to rival France. However, admissions climbed 4.5% and box office grew 2.7%, reaching 1.45 billion EUR, despite the decline of the Czech crown.
Neighboring Slovakia had relatively happy results. Attendance rose by 10.8% and box office grew 9.8%, but admissions overall still lag at just 4.1m (about 25% below the per capita admissions across the Visegrad region), and the domestic film share climbed to a modest 5.7%.
Bulgaria saw some growth overall, with attendance up 3.3%, box office up 3.2%, and the domestic film share rising to 3.5%. Hungary saw both box office and attendance rise by over 8%, but interest in domestic films is still nearly non-existent, at 3.7%. Romania had a surprising surge of 12.4% in attendance and 15.4% in box office, although attendance at domestic films registered a weak 2.2%. Both Romania and Bulgaria lag in overall per capita attendance, falling in the range of about 0.5 cinema visits per person. Neighboring countries Austria and Finland both saw declines in attendance of -7.1% and -6.4% respectively.
