the essential
With 85,000 admissions in 2024, the Veo cinema has achieved the objective it set when it opened. After two difficult years due to the health crisis, the public is now flocking to cinemas.
Three rooms with 232, 129 and 73 seats. For five years, the Veo cinema has been a hit with moviegoers in Castelnaudary and neighboring towns. Opened in 2019, it got off to a rocky start. The tool has nothing to do with it. No more than the public. But this was lacking, constrained and forced, during the confinement between March and May 2020. In the end, between the implementation of gauges and curfews, cinemas experienced a shortage of almost 300 days during this period. cursed year.
Since then, dark rooms have regained their taste for light. On the national level, the CNC (National Center for Cinematography) recorded 181.3 million admissions in 2024, an increase of almost a million admissions compared to 2023. Attendance, if not not yet returned to its pre-crisis level, is now tending to get closer to it, particularly over the last eight months.
In 2023, the Chaurian cinema welcomed nearly 80,000 spectators. “In 2024,” explains Vincent Choquet, “we will have 85,000 entries.” An increase of 5.8%, a rate that would make the small saver green with envy. In fact, the Veo cinema achieved its objective: to reach this bar three years after its opening. “In fact,” adds the person in charge of the structure, “we took five years to achieve this but for almost two years we were slowing down.” But we have come a long way since the Halle aux Grains no longer served as a cinema. At the time, good year or bad, 20,000 spectators flocked there. The quadrupling of attendance can be explained quite simply. “Castelnaudary is an economically dynamic town and it is a central place for all of Lauragais,” notes Vincent Choquet. Added to this is a pricing policy accessible to as many people as possible. At €8.20 per ticket, the cinema has won over its audience. “People find themselves there,” admits the director of the Chaurien cinema. “But we couldn’t do anything alone if the films didn’t follow suit. This year, many French productions stood out from the crowd” and pushed attendance up (read above).
On Chaurian screens, A little something extra brought together 6,000 people. In second place, Kelsey Mann’s animated film, Vice-Versa 2, attracted 4,500 spectators. The Counts of Monte Cristothe film by Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte, completes the podium with just over 4,000 entries. A copy and paste of the national landscape. These three achievements make up more than 17% of entries. What will 2025 look like? “We have not reached a glass ceiling,” believes Vincent Choquet. In 2019, cinema in France attracted more than 220 million spectators, he recalls. I think there is still room for improvement.” In any case, Veo is working on it by developing the screening of arthouse films, festivals and even workshops on image education. Finally, you should know that last year, 392 films were screened in Castelnaudary.
