Space Jam, Black Widow send one million Aussies to cinema despite NSW lockdown

News 14 Jul 2021 - 2 min read

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Tags: Val Morgan Cinema Covid

Val Morgan Cinema says this past weekend was the biggest opening since January 2020, with more than one million people seeing films. And if Sydney hadn’t been in lockdown, that number would be twice as high.

What you need to know:

More than one million Aussies visited the cinema over the past weekend.
Black Widow and Space Jam: A New Legacy were the new releases.
More than half of the Black Widow audience was in the 18-39 year-old demographic.

More than one million Australians visited cinemas over the July 10-11 weekend, the highest opening weekend numbers since January last year despite the lockdown in NSW.

Val Morgan Cinema estimates that number would have been over two million, if not for Sydney’s temporary shutdown.

Marvel Studios’ Black Widow and Space Jam: A New Legacy pushed week-on-week cinema box office results higher by 47 per cent.

Guy Burbidge, Val Morgan Cinema Managing Director, said the past few months have been encouraging with Godzilla vs Kong and Fast & Furious 9.

“These incredible results were delivered despite Sydney languishing in a temporary lockdown,” he said.

“To put this into perspective, if Sydney cinemas had been layered into these results, we would be looking at 2,000,000 admissions for the week, a level +125% up on 2019 average audiences.”

Val Morgan said more than half of the Black Widow audience (52 per cent) were in the 18-39 age group. “This is what hot demand in this demographic looks like,” Burbidge said.

Cinema is expecting one of its biggest ever six months, with major blockbuster movies and others delayed by Covid – The Suicide Squad, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, No Time To Die, Dune, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Top Gun: Maverick, Matrix 4, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and Spider-Man: No Way Home - slated for release later this year.