16/07/2007

Scenes from Roslin chapel, near Edinburgh, featured in the best-performing UK-made film at box offices around the world last year.

According to the UK Film Council’s statistical yearbook for 2006, The Da Vinci Code - which concludes with scenes from the chapel - was the strongest UK film at the worldwide box office, grossing $758 million.

The yearbook also reveals that box office takings in the UK are up 56 per cent since ten years ago and that films shown on UK TV last year attracted a total audience of 3.3 billion, including some 9.5 million viewers alone for Pirates of the Caribbean: the Curse of the Black Pearl, when it was shown on BBC ONE.

Casino Royale was the top box office performer in the UK last year, taking £55.5 million, while 115 million film DVDs were
rented and 163 million film DVDs were sold.

UK film exports grew by 65 per cent between 2003 and 2005, from £633 million in 2003 to £967 million two years later. The USA is the largest market for UK film exports, accounting for 61 per cent in 2005, followed by Europe, taking 19 per cent.

Thirty-one of the top 200 films at the worldwide box office between 2001 and last year were based on stories and characters created by British writers and earned more than $13 billion. Writers include JK Rowling (Harry Potter films), JRR Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings), CS Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia) and Patrick O'Brian (Master and Commander). British directors have directed 19 of these top 200 films and British actors appeared in more than half of them. Ridley Scott was the most frequent director and Orlando Bloom and Sir Ian McKellen the most prolific actors.  

Other findings include:

* 505 films were released at UK cinemas last year compared with 327 in 1998 - a 54 per cent increase. One in five was an UK production.

* Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the highest grossing UK film of all time.
 
* 171 foreign language films were released in the UK last year (33.9 per cent of all films), in 29 languages, and took £29.8 million at the UK box office.

* The top four foreign language films last year were Volver (Spain), Pan's Labyrinth (Mexico), Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (India) and Hidden (France).

* The majority of the UK cinema-going audience is young (nearly half under the age of 25) and the number of older people going to the cinema has doubled in the last decade, from 19 million to 38 million.

* Women's favourite films at the cinema last year were The Devil Wears Prada, The Queen, The Holiday, Brokeback Mountain, and The Break-Up.

* Men preferred United 93, V for Vendetta, Match Point, Borat and X Men 3.

* The UK has the highest number of digital screens in Europe, at 148, followed by Germany, with 105.

* The UK had 3440 screens in 697 cinemas last year, 83 more than the previous year.

* Employment in the UK film and video industry has increased by a third over the past decade - at 42,230 people.

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