Will the FIFA World Cup affect your cin­e­ma plans this summer?

For any­one not already aware, the FIFA World Cup is kind of a big deal. Every four years the tour­na­ment attracts an aver­age glob­al audi­ence of around three bil­lion. With close to half the world’s pop­u­la­tion glued to their tele­vi­sion sets, it stands to rea­son that cin­e­ma atten­dances should dip dur­ing the 30-day foot­balling extravaganza.

This year alone, both Incred­i­bles 2 and Ant-Man and the Wasp are being released in the UK a month lat­er than the US in a bid to avoid any over­lap with the World Cup. In response fans of the lat­ter have start­ed a peti­tion to move the film’s release date for­ward, claim­ing that the delay is unnec­es­sary. Which begs the ques­tion: just how much of an impact does the World Cup have on the film industry?

Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing the tour­na­ment doesn’t pull in huge crowds in North Amer­i­ca (despite the 1994 USA World Cup still hold­ing the record for atten­dance fig­ures), and as such the major film stu­dios rarely both­er shift­ing release dates to accom­mo­date it. Case in point: Michael Bay’s Armaged­don, which took the US box office by storm in July, 1998, despite its luke­warm crit­i­cal recep­tion. Being released at an ide­al time for a sum­mer block­buster, the film earned $36m on its open­ing week­end and went on to gross to over $201m in the US and Cana­da alone, mak­ing it the sec­ond high­est gross­ing film of the year.

Yet while Armaged­don went on to become the high­est gross­ing film of 1998 world­wide, it did not enjoy the same lev­el of suc­cess every­where. Due to the World Cup tak­ing place between 10 June and 12 July, the film was held back until 5 August in France, the tournament’s host nation, and 7 August in the UK. In France Armaged­don was only the sev­enth high­est gross­ing of the year, while it per­formed only mar­gin­al­ly bet­ter in the UK, fin­ish­ing the year as the fourth high­est gross­ing film.

In June, 2006, the likes Cars, Super­man Returns, and Over the Hedge all per­formed well at the North Amer­i­can box office. The first two of these films were released lat­er in the UK, short­ly after the end of the World Cup, and went on to place ninth and tenth respec­tive­ly on the end of year box office charts, com­pared to third and fifth high­est world­wide. In the UK, Over the Hedge was one of the few notable releas­es dur­ing the World Cup, sug­gest­ing that a film tar­get­ing audi­ences oth­er than adult males can still per­form well. This view was upheld by Pablo Nogueroles, a man­ag­ing direc­tor at Warn­er Bros, in an inter­view with Dead­line: ​“We have his­tor­i­cal­ly dat­ed films dur­ing the World Cup that main­ly play to a more female tar­get and I still think there are oppor­tu­ni­ties for films that are more famil­iar orientated.”

This was again shown to be true in 2014. The Fault in Our Stars was ini­tial­ly slat­ed for release in August and Sep­tem­ber, but this changed when, eye­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty, Fox brought the release for­ward into the World Cup frame. The idea was to offer audi­ences an alter­na­tive to the foot­ball, and the strat­e­gy worked, with the film gross­ing $307m from a $12m budget.

The World Cup’s most pro­nounced effect on the film indus­try occurred in 2014. On the week­end fol­low­ing the start of the tour­na­ment, the over­all UK box office totalled just $12m – almost $4m down on the same week­end in the pre­vi­ous year. Per­haps the biggest casu­al­ty was Trans­form­ers: Age of Extinc­tion. The fourth film in the Trans­form­ers fran­chise grossed a mam­moth $1.1bn world­wide, becom­ing the high­est gross­ing film of the year. But once again the stu­dio was keen to avoid clash­ing with the World Cup for a full month in Europe and South Amer­i­ca, and so wait­ed until ear­ly July to release the film in sev­er­al territories.

Nev­er­the­less, the World Cup seem­ing­ly dam­aged the film’s per­for­mance. In the host nation, Brazil, the film made $2.7m on its open­ing week, con­sid­er­ably less than the $5.7m earned by pre­vi­ous fran­chise instal­ment Dark of the Moon in 2011. In the UK, Age of Extinc­tion was only the thir­teenth high­est gross­ing film of the year, mak­ing $12m less than its predecessor.

Of course, there are many fac­tors that deter­mine a film’s com­mer­cial suc­cess, and in some cas­es, a poor per­for­mance in a World Cup year could be mere coin­ci­dence. How­ev­er, stu­dios are clear­ly aware of the risk of clash­ing with such a major event, as one exec­u­tive told Dead­line: ​“No film any­one expects to gross over $100m is sched­uled dur­ing the tour­na­ment. You can take a cal­cu­lat­ed bet on a small­er movie, but not on a tentpole.”

While stu­dios have only the option of mov­ing their releas­es out­side of the 30-day World Cup peri­od, cin­e­ma chains have attempt­ed to use the tour­na­ment to their advan­tage. In 2010, 40 screens nation­wide screened quar­ter-finals, semi-finals and the final live. The fol­low­ing World Cup, Cineworld decid­ed against this and saw their prof­its drop by 16 per cent. This year, The Luna Cin­e­ma, the UK’s biggest out­door cin­e­ma chain, is screen­ing a total of 40 match­es at their beach venue in Brighton. Oth­ers are like­ly to fol­low suit, with some Odeon branch­es already con­firm­ing they will show the final on 15 July.

Despite the demand of non-foot­ball fans, this all points to the fact that glob­al events such as the World Cup can have a pro­found effect on the film indus­try. Have you ever missed a film just to see your favourite nation­al team play? And if so, will you be doing so again this sum­mer? Let us know @LWLies