With all the 2012 blockbuster trailers coming out this past week, (if you haven’t yet seen the Prometheus trailer, what have you been waiting for?!) it’s not difficult to get excited about next year’s film slate but at DCM we’ve paused for a minute to reflect on the last twelve months.

There’s been some spectacular cinematic highlights over the past year (has it really been twelve months since The King’s Speech made waves at the UK box office?), so we asked DCM staff to name their top three films of the year. The results have been processed through an extremely complex spread-sheet and collated into an exhaustive list for your reading pleasure.

Over forty films were voted for, with a few surprise entrants (Just Go With It – anyone?) but as expected there were a handful of titles that kept popping up again and again.

The clear winner with thirty two points was Nicolas Winding Refn’s hugely stylish Drive, with Asif Kapadia’s thrilling documentary about Ayrton Senna just pinching second place from The King’s Speech. One other particularly notable performer was David Fincher’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Considering it isn’t on general release until Boxing Day and most staff haven’t seen it, it did incredibly well to make the top ten.

The rest of the results are as follows:

Let us know what your favourite film of 2011 on our Facebook page.

Whatever your thoughts on the eventual winner, 2011 has been a fantastic year for cinema and 2012 is shaping up to be even better.

The awards season this year brought us quality films like Black Swan, 127 Hours and British drama, The King’s Speech. This created a huge stir and cleaned up at the awards winning 4 Oscars, 7 BAFTAS and 1 Golden Globe.

Next year the quality of film product just gets better allowing you to position your brand alongside the crème de la crème of upmarket film product reaching an upmarket 72%* ABC1 audience in Q1 2012.

* Source: CAA Film Monitor estimates based on 6 key awards films in Q1 2011

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – 26 December 2012

Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara bring Stieg Larsson’s best-selling novel to the big screen with the help of David Fincher. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is expected to generate 1.5M industry impacts upon it’s December release and targets an upmarket 25+ ABC1 market. This remake of the Swedish thriller, based on the award winning crime novel by Stieg Larsson already has huge awards buzz surrounding it and is set to be a worldwide success.

The Iron Lady – 6 January 2012

Targeting a predominantly older female ABC1 market, Oscar winner Meryl Streep stars as The Iron Lady in this biopic drama based on the life of British former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

War Horse – 13 January 2012

Critically acclaimed Oscar winning director, Steven Spielberg is bringing the stage to the big screen, and there are high hopes for this adaption of the celebrated novel by Michael Morpurgo to be a big success.

J. Edgar - 20 January 2012

Four times Oscar winner Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino, Million Dollar Baby), brings us a star studded biopic drama on the scandalous life of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

A Dangerous Method - 10 February 2012

David Cronenberg brings us a dark and gripping psychological thriller based on a play by Christopher Hampton. The controversial adult theme has already set tongues wagging, and is set to be a big award contender in 2012.

COMPETITION

In celebration of the upcoming film awards in Q1 2012, we are offering you the chance to WIN a glamorous film screening exclusively for you and your colleagues** at the Soho Hotel in London. There will be champagne, canapés and a red carpet.

To enter simply answer this question:

Upcoming film awards contender The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is based on the novel by which author?

Email your answer to redcarpet@dcm.co.uk by Friday 25 November 2011. One winner will be selected at random and announced on Monday 28 November 2011. For full Terms and Conditions, click here.

**Screening room seats a total of 45 people

February’s industry impacts totalled a massive 17.2m, which was +15.8% up against February 2010. This is the best February box office result in nine years, and the second best result of all time, behind 2002′s 19m.

Another record broken this year was the month’s total box office; with February generating £112.1m (+19.4% YoY), the highest ever box office result for February of all time and also the first to break past the £100m barrier! Year to date we now stand at 32.5m and up a healthy +10.1% YoY.

Top of the class again was The King’s Speech, generating an additional box office of £14.7m during February. It was backed up by the strong performances of fellow Oscar nominees and winners, including Black Swan, True Grit, The Fighter, et al.

3D stars of February that aided to boost impacts and box office include Tangled 3D, Gnomeo and Juliet, and not to forget Justin “Never Say Never” Bieber. Brit buddies Simon Pegg and Nick Frost won over UK audiences again with their latest comedy Paul, tracking behind Hot Fuzz as their second best collaboration to date.

TOP THREE GROSSING FILMS IN FEBRUARY 2011

The King’s Speech  £14,699,060		Tangled  £13,882,806		Gnomeo & Juliet  £13,044,96

DCM’S BOX OFFICE EMAILS – FEBRUARY 2011

If you missed our Box Office email’s in February, you can catch-up here.

BOX OFFICE – 02/02/11
BOX OFFICE – 09/02/11
BOX OFFICE – 22/02/11

Never miss another issue by subscribing to our eNewsletters.

Source: Cinema Advertising Association (CAA), 1 – 28 February 2011.

This weeks film schedule updates:

• L’Affaire Farewell has moved from Oct-TBA 2010 to Nov-TBA 2010
• Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader now opens Thurs 09-Dec 2010
• Monsters has moved from 26-Nov 2010 to 03-Dec 2010
• Somewhere has moved from 04-Mar 2011 to 10-Dec 2010
• Howl has moved from 07-Jan 2011 to 25-Feb 2011
• Just Go With It has moved from 25-Feb 2011 to 11-Feb 2011<
• Black Swan has moved from 11-Feb 2011 to 18-Feb 2011<
• Barney’s Version has moved from 07-Jan 2011 to 28-Jan 2011
• The Adjustment Bureau has moved from 11-Mar 2011 to 04-Mar 2011
• The Eagle has moved from 25-Feb 2011 to 18-Mar 2011
• Mars Needs Moms had moved from 11-Mar 2011 to 22-Apr 2011
• Adventures of Tin Tin has moved from 25-Nov 2011 to 26-Oct 2011

The films schedule has been updated to reflect these changes.