Controversial trends in film distribution in Hungary

25 July, 2009 - filmhu

In the first five month of 2009 the incomes of film distributors has grown 12% comparing to the same period of 2008 so it reached HUF 3.99 billion (EUR 14,7 million).

The total attendence has grown as wel from 3.74 million to 3.88 million, even so the number of the screenings has decreased from 196 000 to 176 000. The average price of ticket has grew only HUF 2 so it is HUF 1016 (about EUR 4). So the trend of the previous years has changed: until 2008 the number of attendance was decreasing.

But while the whole market seems to be growing, the distribution of independent films is in crisis, and the art house cinema network called Artmozi Hálózat (http://www.artmozi.hu/) has also serious problems – the kult cinema Bem in Budapest closed in the beginning of July due to financial reasosns, though temporarely it reopened soon after.

The biggest distributors have left the market: th SPI International Hungary (http://www.spi.hu/) quitted in april of 2009, and the Budapest Film (http://portal.budapestfilm.hu/) has been suspending the distributional activity until a new investor joins to the distributional sector of the company.

The independent distribution takes nevertheless the minor part of the whole market, the two major distributors UIP-Dunafilm (http://www.uipduna.hu/dynuip/) and Intercom ( http://www.intercom.hu/) have the 2/3rd of the market.