UK and Ireland cinema takings on post-pandemic high as A Minecraft Movie tops 2025 box office

The UK and Irish box office has recorded its best annual performance since the Covid pandemic, with A Minecraft Movie ending 2025 as the highest-grossing film of the year.Figures released by box-office analysts Comscore show that box office revenue in the UK and Ireland totalled £1.07bn, an increase of 1% on 2024’s total of £1.06bn. At the same time there was a slight decrease in the amount of films released: 1,092 in 2025, compared with 1,124 in 2024.The result is the highest total since 2019, which saw £1.35bn in total revenue, shortly before the collapse of the physical cinema box office the following year, to £323.7m, as Covid restrictions hit hard. Cinema revenues recovered to £595.5m in 2021, and £980.7m in 2022, only returning above £1bn in 2023, with a total of £1.06bn.The numbers of films on release suggest that the production pipeline, hit both by the pandemic and subsequent film industry strikes in 2023, has recovered, and is in fact exceeding pre-pandemic levels; in 2019, 938 films were released. Significantly however, a recalibration of strategy appears to be occurring, with 224 films recorded in 2025 as “saturation” releases (ie playing in over 250 venues simultaneously), compared with 200 in 2024 and 188 in 2019. According to Comscore, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale had the widest opening in the UK in 2025, with over 750 cinemas.The highest grossing film of 2025 in the UK and Ireland was gaming adaptation A Minecraft Movie, whose viral impact including the “chicken jockey” scene, has translated into box office supremacy, with a total of £56.88m. The film also topped the 2025 North American box office, taking $423.9m, but only came in fifth at the worldwide box office with $958.3m – well behind the global leader, Chinese animation Ne Zha 2, which reported returns of $2.24bn.Of British productions, the fourth Bridget Jones film, subtitled Mad About the Boy, finished the year as the most successful at the UK and Irish box office, taking £46.4m and coming well ahead of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale and 28 Years Later in second and third place, with £18.4m and £15.6m respectively.The figures also revealed the continuing strength of “event cinema” releases which took a total of £44m (4.1% of the total), and which included 10 films taking more than £1m. Among these was the best ever performance for a stage production; the film of West End production Six the Musical amassed £6.2m – although this is well short of the record “event cinema” total of £12.3m for Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour in 2023.Phil Clapp, chief executive of the UK Cinema Association said: “Although it saw only a small year-on-year increase in box office, 2025 undoubtedly marked a significant further step in the sector’s recovery following the challenges of recent years. There is great optimism that the coming months will see significant further progress.”