Val Morgan Cinema experienced its biggest opening weekend audiences since January 2020 as over one million Australians raced to the cinemas, driven by the eagerly anticipated Marvel Studios superhero film Black Widow (main photo) and the family favourite Space Jam: A New Legacy.
Val Morgan Cinema managing director Guy Burbidge said: “These incredible results were delivered despite Sydney languishing in a temporary lockdown. 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 up 125 per cent up on 2019 average audiences.
“We’ve seen very encouraging results over the last couple of months with Godzilla vs Kong, Fast & Furious 9, and now Black Widow. July marks the month where Cinema’s content floodgates burst open and we have enormous confidence that these numbers will only grow as we move into huge titles like 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.
“Whilst the weekend’s numbers impressed overall, cinema yet again proved the fact that it is still the best place to connect with hard-to-reach youth audiences, as Black Widow demonstrated the continued strength of the 18-39 demographic, with over 52 per cent of the audience coming from this hard-to-reach cohort. This is what hot demand in this demographic looks like,” Burbidge said.
He continued: “Cinema is showing no signs of slowing down and will continue to get bigger with over a years’ worth of content packed into the remaining six months of the year. We have the best future release slate cinema has ever seen.”
