Video game spinoff was the highest-grossing film of the year at £56.88m as the sector continued its recovery after Covid
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.
