“Whovians” habitually sit on the sofa—or hide behind it—to watch their favourite time-traveller battle Daleks, Cybermen, Zygons and other monsters. But on November 23rd thousands of them, all around the world, settled into cinema seats to see “Doctor Who” in 3D. The 50th-anniversary episode of the British television show was screened on 800 big screens in 20 countries at the same time as being broadcast on the BBC’s channels.
Doctor Who’s eagerly anticipated 50th anniversary episode ‘The Day of the Doctor’ teleported its way into the UK box office with £1.8m, setting a new European record for alternative cinema content and becoming the third highest-grossing film over the weekend hot on the heels of blockbusters The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Gravity. Read more
Phil Clapp, Chief Executive of the Cinema Exhibitors' Association, told Huffington Post readers this week, why he believes the cinema offers the ultimate movie viewing experience.
A few weeks back at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, Steve Moffatt - the man behind two of Britain's biggest TV hits in Sherlock and Doctor Who - told an audience why in his opinion television was better than the movies. Given his pedigree, you might think that unremarkable. And on both sides of the Atlantic, it's probably true to say that we are in something of a golden age for long-form TV series, with Moffat's own offspring standing shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Breaking Bad and Mad Men. But Moffat went further than that - he said that television was better than cinema. And that's fighting talk. He then went on to give five reasons why this was the case. Well, as they say in the US, 'straight back at ya' - here are more than five reasons he's wrong: Read more
Cinephile’s met at the Hospital Club this week to earn bragging rights for the remainder of 2013 at the final DCM Movie Quiz of the year.
Tom Linay, Film Specialist at DCM, played quiz master and warmed up the assembled crowd before dazzling us with his knowledge of Christmas related movies. Read more
Peter Souter, Chairman and chief creative officer for TBWA\UK Group, was a provocative keynote speaker at last weeks inaugural DCM Upfronts, offering his thoughts on why advertising needs to hold itself to higher standards.
The purpose of the Upfronts event was to bring together industry leaders to discuss the future of cinema, the power of storytelling on the big screen and new ad opportunities to target the diverse cinemagoing audience. Read more
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire continued to heat up the top of the box office, comfortably holding on to the number one spot. The dystopian blockbuster fell 46%, once previews are removed, to £5.5m and after 11 days in cinemas has an imposing cume of £21.7m. That figure places Catching Fire just £3m behind the first Hunger Games’ £24m final total and it now looks almost certain to reach £30m.
Gravity held on to second place with another strong hold, falling just 27% to £1.7m, for a hugely impressive cume of £22.5m. It should get to £25m, which is a fantastic achievement. This week’s highest new entry was thanksgiving animation Free Birds, in third spot with £1m. That puts it on a par with other animated titles, A Monster In Paris (£1m) and A Turtle’s Tale (£1.1m). Read more
This week, to celebrate and showcase the evolution of digital cinema and the dynamic new media possibilities available to advertisers, BAFTA opened its doors to host the inaugural annual DCM Upfronts event.
The industry came together for a morning of inspired sessions from experts in different fields, who debated the power of story-telling, technical innovations, the varied cinemagoing audiences and the exciting 2014 film slate. Read more
Doctor Who’s eagerly anticipated 50th anniversary episode ‘The Day of the Doctor’ teleported its way into the UK box office with £1.8m, setting a new European record for alternative cinema content and becoming the third highest-grossing film over the weekend hot on the heels of blockbusters The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Gravity.
According to Rentrak, the screenings also earned £843,969 in Australia, £126,133 in the US and £195,461 in Germany, to name only a few that contributed to the rest of its impressive international earnings. Read more
The Hunger Games caught fire this weekend, heating up the top of the box office with the third biggest Friday to Sunday opening weekend of the year. Including Thursday previews, Catching Fire opened with £12.2m (£2.1m of that from previews). That puts it just behind Iron Man 3 (£11.4m) and Man Of Steel (£11.2m) in the biggest Friday to Sunday openings of the year. It’s also over double the opening weekend of The Hunger Games (£4.9m) in March 2012.
After two sensational weekends, Gravity dropped to second, falling 51% to £2.4m and a cume of £19.4m. That means it has overtaken The Hangover Part III to place tenth on the list of 2013’s biggest films. There’s still more to come too. Read more
Gravity continued its meteoric rise this weekend past, taking a huge £4.8m in the UK box office. With previews removed, that’s a decline of only 14%, this also brings Gravity’s cume to £14.7m after just two weeks on release, an impressive feat for a wholly original sci-fi movie.
Thor: The Dark World continued to hammer away at the box office in second place, taking £1.8m bringing the Norse gods cume to just over £17m, surpassing the first Thor’s entire five week run by £2m. Read more
Digital Cinema Media’s (DCM) resident Film Specialist, Tom Linay, was lucky enough to attend a preview screening of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, starring Jenifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson.
Since the success of the Twilight films, producers around the world have been scouring their offspring's bookshelves for young adult fiction novels to adapt into feature films in the hope of starting a new global franchise. Beautiful Creatures, The Mortal Instruments and I Am Number Four, amongst others, have all made the transition to the big screen and to date arguably the only unqualified success since Twilight has been The Hunger Games. Read more
On Thursday 14 November, Digital Cinema Media (DCM) took over three of Havas’ and Arena’s meeting rooms to talk to staff from the Planning, Buying and Insight teams, as well as a range of their key clients about Cinemology.
Cinemology is DCM's ongoing study into the various people that visit the cinema – who they are, why they go, how cinema fits in alongside the rest of their media consumption, and what it means to them. Read more
Digital Cinema Media’s (DCM) CEO Simon Rees talks about the importance of attracting and nurturing talent in the media industry.
Earlier this month I attended the dinner to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Advertising Association’s Media Business Course. The course is created and run by advertising, for advertising, and this year was a special one. Inspiring figures from our industry including, Cilla Snowball, Group Chairman and CEO of AMV BBDO and Sir John Hegarty, Creative Founder of BBH, reflected on the best of the past 50 years, while also ensuring the course remained fresh and relevant to today’s business challenges. Read more
