The British box office is heading for its best year in almost five decades as cinemas continue to defy the stay-at-home lure of Netflix.

When the final ticket stubs are counted it is expected that British cinemagoers will have attended 176m times this year, a number not seen since 1971 when the hits included Diamonds are Forever, French Connection, Dirty Harry and Fiddler on the Roof.

There is no Christmas Star Wars blockbuster to turbo-charge the box office in 2018 but film experts believe the 1971 mark will be bettered thanks to a slate of December releases featuring the return of Mary Poppins, Aquaman, the Transformers spin-off Bumblebee and an animated Spiderman.

“It will take something really unexpected, something pretty incredible, not to get to there now,” said Phil Clapp, the chief executive of the UK Cinema Association. “It looks like being record admissions, and box office, for modern times.”

According to Clapp, in four of the last five years December admissions have been 16m or more. Given cinema admission numbers broke the 160m mark at the end of November, that should be enough to hit or break 176m.

Across the Atlantic, the US box office is also on for a record year and could even hit the $12bn mark for the first time.

UK attendance is expected to be up by about 6m on 2017. The rise is being attributed to factors including a much more diverse film slate ranging from musicals and superhero films to animated family fare.

Last year four films broke £40m at the British box office – Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Beauty and the Beast, Dunkirk and Despicable Me 3. This year eight films have done so to date – Avengers: Infinity War, Mamma Mia 2, Incredibles 2, Black Panther, Bohemian Rhapsody, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Peter Rabbit and The Greatest Showman. And there is a good chance that by the end of the year Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Mary Poppins Returns and Aquaman will have joined them.

“A broad range of films and genres are doing extremely well,” said Clapp. “The notion [that] it is only superhero films driving the box office is disproved by the numbers.”

Another factor is significant investment by the big cinema chain owners in their venues, such as installing higher-quality screens, as well as the rise of more boutique operators such as Everyman.

Crispin Lilly, the chief executive of Everyman, said the combination of films and socialising was proving popular with audiences across the UK. The chain, which offers plush seating as well as food, drink and a bar area, has almost tripled its number of venues across the UK in the last four years to 26. It expects attendance to hit 2.5 million this year, a tripling of the number four years ago.

“There has been huge investment back into the cinema experience and the UK has led the way,” said Lilly, adding that independent chains now represented 7% of UK box office, compared with 2.5% four years ago.

As Netflix ploughs more and more money into buying and making content – $8bn this year alone – the temptation to stay in and binge would appear to be ever more irresistible. But the cinema attendance figures paint a more complicated picture.

“Of course there is competition out there – from pubs and bars to home entertainment,” Lilly said. “People want value for money but they also want value for time. Offering value for money is a given but offering value for people’s time is something you really have to work to deliver.

“There are films people choose to see on the big screen rather than at home. However, with investment in the experience it is also removing the risk of relying on just the film being good. Cinema is alive and well.”

Sofas, superheroes and singalongs: why cinema success is no surprise

Can it really be true that UK cinema admissions are heading for the highest point since 1971? Just as the industry is agonising about pressures on the moviegoing experience from streaming services such as Netflix? Just as admission prices are starting to balloon, with London’s newly refurbished Odeon Leicester Square announcing an eye-watering top price of £40.75?

In many ways, it shouldn’t be that surprising. The cinema-going experience continues to be an attractive prospect. The days of mangy old fleapits are long gone, and cinemas are places of comfy sofas offering (mostly) tasty food and drink, sometimes brought to your seat. Compared to the theatre, opera or Premier League football matches, it’s still reasonably priced.

And the tentpoles are still holding up, with some humungous superhero movies – the idea of which causes some people to groan and a lot of others to cheer. Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War brought out the crowds and so did the surreally enjoyable Black Panther. Crowds defied the lukewarm reviews for feelgood singalong extravaganzas and turned out in droves for Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and also for Rami Malek’s extravagant impersonation of Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. The movies are finding their own equivalent of the theatre world’s jukebox musical. Get it right and it’s a licence to print money.

There is also, on a rather more highbrow note, a plethora of superb independent arthouse movies, which did well in a flourishing atmosphere: wonderful work from Paul Thomas Anderson, Lynne Ramsay, Debra Granik, Lucrecia Martel. The winner of the Cannes Palme d’Or was a complex, challenging drama about an extended family with an awful secret: Shoplifters, by Hirokazu Kore-eda. It did very respectable box-office business, and people were talking about it. Sometimes those mega superhero movies are like giant ocean liners that splosh down the slipway into the harbour, raising the water level and lifting the smaller boats. Other movies benefit.

And perhaps the cinema world is simply seeing what the music scene is seeing. Despite the web and streaming platforms, the cinema, like the live concert, is a real event. It can’t be downloaded. You have to be there, or you’re missing out.
Peter Bradshaw