Box office: French cinemas are having their worst month for more than twenty years

A record from which French cinema would have done well.

With 13.19 million spectators, attendance at French cinemas recorded its lowest level for the month of March since 1999, according to CNC estimates relayed by Le Film Français.

Neither the Printemps du Cinéma, which took place this year from March 20 to 22, nor the release of highly anticipated films such as

and

have managed to raise the bar.

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Read alsoCinema: theaters are still struggling to regain their pre-Covid attendance

One bad news augurs another, the cumulative results for the first quarter of 2022 show that the phenomenon is not really a mishap.

From January to the end of March, 36.9 million tickets were sold this year, a lower result than in 2020, a year marked by the emergence of covid.

At the time, cinemas had been increasingly deserted as concern grew over this mysterious epidemic from China.

The cinemas had also been closed on March 14, two days before the announcement of general confinement, depriving the theaters of two weeks of operation.

And despite everything, the first quarter of 2020 had recorded 38.3 million admissions, against 36.9 million this year.

By way of comparison, over the same period in 2019,

Among the films that have nevertheless pulled out of the game,

 which reached 2.7 million admissions and takes the top step of the podium.

The French film

which charmed 900,000 spectators after the million admissions in February, follows suit.

Followed by

which came out in mid-February can boast of having attracted nearly 900,000 souls.

The continuation of the podium shows a hexagonal cinema more in halftone.

a shock film by Jean-Jacques Annaud who was expected to be a bulldozer, only convinced half a million spectators over its two weeks of operation in March.

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