A year ago, the balance of cinema in Argentina showed very disparate figures, with very pronounced ups and downs. The trend has deepened even further over the last twelve months and 2024 will be recorded in the local market as the closest thing to a roller coaster.
On the one hand we have the colossal success of Intensely 2one of the two exclusive titles that attracted more than six million viewers since our country’s cinema has had reliable statistics (as of 1997). Above all, the best June in the last three decades in the national market was based on this figure.. And on the other, very pronounced drops in other sections of this same year. Without going any further, The winter holiday period (historically the peak ticket demand of the entire year) had the lowest performance at the box office in the last 15 years.
And there’s more: the worst month of 2024 at the box office was September, with 45% fewer tickets sold in the year-on-year comparison. July had the lowest box office figure in the last 10 years and a similar decrease was recorded in October, in this case of 30%. The flip side was November, which improved the performance of the billboard by 15% compared to the same period in 2023.
The reason for these very pronounced swings is always the same. The public is moved by the attraction and power of certain titles with an irresistible power of attraction. Intensely 2 (6,470,026 tickets sold in Argentine theaters, according to Ultracine numbers) this year was about to take over the historical box office record that it has held in the local market since 2019 Toy Story 4 (6.632.011).
All this is noted in a context of notable decrease in ticket sales. This year, nine million fewer tickets were sold compared to 2023: 33,863,227 up to and including December 17 of this year compared to a total of 43,075,318 for all of last year. Of those almost 34 million tickets sold this year in theaters, 29 and a half million were for films of American origin. Another resounding example of the extreme concentration that the local billboard has had for many years.
The stone guests of this increasingly repeated scenario were, once again, Argentine cinema and international premieres of independent or auteur films, the latter increasingly limited to festivals and specialized exhibitions. These screenings usually fill up, but when some of the titles exhibited there go on to be released commercially, the result is almost always meager.
These nine million fewer tickets sold by cinemas in relation to 2023 are also explained by the chain failure of a good part of the big bets that Hollywood made this year on a global scale. It was a forgettable year for the big studios, conditioned in the programming of their releases this year by the effects of the extensive strike of actors and screenwriters in 2023, and with notorious failures: Joker 2, Code: red suit, Furious and the latest movies of the Ghostbusters and the Transformers.
The proof that is most visible is the difference between the number of films that exceeded one million viewers in the last two years. In 2023 there were 14 and in 2024, only five. We had, it is true, a phenomenon of unusual proportions such as Intenselybut behind they barely reached that mark Despicable Me 4 (3.245.981), Deadpool & Wolverine (2.983.529), Kung Fu Panda 4 (1.481.662) y Moana 2 (1,362,454), the latter still on the bill and in a position to reach fourth place. The five also belong to the classic trend of sequels and remakes that have also long served as a reference of practice and success in the Hollywood industrial system.
There was little room for the rest, with isolated phenomena, but significant for the ability to attract viewers through word of mouth and generate debates and conversations from there. There are, for example, the romantic drama Break the circle (946,917 tickets sold) and the surprising The substancea film by body horror extreme that added 301,223 spectators in cinemas. Horror films, by the way, had almost one release per week, supported by a loyal audience thanks to some very profitable titles such as The first prophecy y smile 2.
In the increasingly devalued space dedicated to auteur cinema, for example, the latest films by Pedro Almodovar (The next room) and Woody Allen (Stroke of luck in Paris). Some Oscar protagonists had better luck earlier this year, such as past lives y perfect daysalthough with very reduced releases.
Argentine cinema was much more attentive to the impact of the strong adjustment plan applied throughout the year by the Government in Incaa than to local developments in cinemas. The premieres were striking once again for their quantity (almost 300) and in general for their lack of attendance (just over 2% of the total tickets sold in the year). The most viewed Argentine film in cinemas, The jockeywas the only national release this year that exceeded 100,000 tickets.
*according to the votes of Marcelo Stiletano, Natalia Trzenko, Leonardo D’Esposito, Guillermo Courau, Paula Vázquez Prieto, Pablo De Vita, Pablo Planovsky, Alejandro Lingenti and Hernán Ferreirós.
According to the criteria of
