The boss of Vue has hailed an “extraordinary” Christmas for UK cinemas but warned it remains in “recovery mode” after Hollywood strikes slimmed down the number of films slated for release. Wicked and Gladiator II were popular titles that helped deliver a boost to the sector.
Tim Richards, the founder and chief executive of Vue, told the PA news agency that UK cinemas enjoyed “one of the biggest Decembers in history,” helped by bookings for family films like Mufasa: The Lion King and Moana 2. This has continued into 2025 with the release of the fourth Bridget Jones film, which has taken £20.5 million in the UK and Ireland over its first week in cinemas.
The romantic-comedy broke box office records over its opening weekend for production company Working Title, which is also behind titles including Love Actually and Hot Fuzz. 2025 will see the release of films such as Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and Avatar: Fire and Ash, which Mr Richards said are expected to be big hits.
However, the cinema executive warned the sector is still feeling the effects of a period of a strike action in Hollywood in 2023, with screenwriters and actors in dispute over jobs and pay, which halted the production and release of films. “We saw independent film production slow down, or stop, and it didn’t really get going until the spring of last year,” Mr Richards said.
This has led to a “significantly-reduced number of films” in 2024, with the company still expecting “big gaps until the end of the year”. Nonetheless, Vue has unveiled plans to upgrade its UK cinemas, starting with the recently-completed renovation of its venue in Swindon, Wiltshire.
This has seen the installation of self-service ticket scanning and snack-building, luxury recliner seats, some with built-in wine coolers, and charging points. Mr Richards, who founded Vue with the first cinema launched in Scotland in 2000, said it was planning 19 major refurbishments across Europe, with Swindon the “prototype” for the makeovers.
Vue has 92 cinemas in the UK and Ireland, with prices starting at £4.99 for standard seats in some locations. “We are very conscious that a lot of our customers may have had a more difficult time over the past few years and might be more price-sensitive,” Mr Richards told PA.
He said that has encouraged the company to retain its lowest-price offer while it is also working to “absorb” the additional costs it is facing from tax measures announced in the Government’s autumn Budget. The fiscal statement was “bad timing” for the leisure industry, he said, which has come under a series of pressures since the Covid-19 pandemic and cost-of-living crisis.
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