Statistics point to a strong recovery for cinemas in Mexico, though not for local content. The Statistical Summary of Mexican Cinema 2021 published last Wednesday (11 May) provides an overview of all key metrics for the largest cinema market in terms of attendance for all of Latin America.

2021 saw Mexican box office total MXN 7,302 million (USD $363 million), almost exactly doubled the MXN 3,153 million (USD $156.8 million) of 2020 . Mexican cinema took MXN 480 million (USD $23.8 million) more than the last 10 months of 2020 in December 2021 alone. Attendance also doubled year-on-year and production of local feature films was up 133%. However, local films only saw 4.9 million admissions in 2021, despite the number of local films opening (148 in 2021) was double the previous years, when Mexican films sold 7.5 million tickets. In total 2 million people saw one or more Mexican films in cinemas in 2021, compared to 3.15 million in 2020.

“Spider-Man: No Way Home” leads the box office with over 17 million viewers, followed by “Fast & Furious” with 8.04, “Venom” with 2.7, “Godzilla vs. Kong” with 6.3, “The Conjuring” with 5.3 and “Eternals” 4.6.

The national titles with the highest grossing was “El Merero,” which accumulated 22,350,267 million pesos in its 11 weeks of exhibition, followed by “Sin Señas Particulares” with 4,303,822, “Noche de Fuego” 1,000,728 and “I Take You With Me” 1,087,454.

Fuera Defoco

Cinema ticket prices increased from an average of MXN 57.2 (USD $2.84) in 2020 to MXN 64.9 (USD $3.23) in 2021. As also seen in countries such as South Korea, there has been a net loss of jobs in the cinema sector compared to before the pandemic. In 2019 the Mexican exhibition sector employed 34,831 people, while by 2020 this was down to 24,146, representing a net loss of 10,685 jobs.