French Box Office Posts 13.6% Drop In Admissions For 2025

French cinema admissions dropped 13.6% year-on-year in 2025 to 156.79M admissions, against 181.52M last year, for a rough gross of $1.36B (€1.16b), according to figures released by France’s National Cinema Centre (CNC).

The figures confirmed a complex year at the French box office in which only January and December saw small year-on-year admission gains, while the summer months saw drops in admissions of 28.5% in May and 29.6% in August.

The top performing films across 2025 were Zootopia 2 with 6.18 million entries, followed by Lilo & Stitch (5.1m), Avatar: Fire and Ash (4.58m), F1: The Movie (3.31m) and Jurassic World Renaissance (2.97m).

The best performing French film was comedy franchise God Save The Tuche, which came in sixth with 2.95 million entries and was the only local production to make it into the top ten.

This was in contrast to 2024 when French films dominated the top five, led by The top surprise breakout title A Little Something Extra with 10M entries and The Count Of Monte Cristo (9.1M).

Looking for silver linings, the CNC noted that France’s box office remained the biggest in Europe, listing admissions of 85 million for Germany, 67 million for Italy and 65 million for Spain up until December 28, as well as the fact that French films took a 37.7% market share.

The latter figure was down on 2024 when French films accounted for 44% of admissions, but is in line with pre-pandemic levels. The U.S. share of the market was stable at 35.8%, against 35.6% last year.

The CNC also pointed to the small 0.9% year-on-year rise to 20.73 million admissions in December, on the back of strong performances by Avatar: Fire and Ash, Zootopia 2, The Housemaid and French documentary Whispers in the Woods.

“2025 was a mixed year for cinemas, with a declining market due to a lack of crowd-pleasing films and surprise hits like those of 2024 but saw strong rebound at the end of the year, driven by a robust offering of films, particularly American ones,” said CNC President Gaëtan Bruel.

“This result should not overshadow the long-term relevance of our model: an unparalleled network of cinemas that allows a wide variety of films to reach all audiences, and a market share of French films that makes France an exception in Europe and worldwide,” he added.

In spite of the lack a big box office hits, the CNC noted that a number of French films had put in respectable showings at the box office. After God Save The Tuche, the top performing films were My Mother, God, And Sylvie Vartan with 1.4M admissions, How To Make A Killing (1.39M), Colours of Time (887,000), The Richest Woman In The World (883,000), The Ties That Bind Us (750,000), The Stranger (734,000) and Case 137 (645,000).

Another bright spot was the performance of arthouse films, with the CNC pointing to the performances of One Battle After Another with 1.5M admissions, Mickey 17 (1.2M), Sirât (700,000), It Was Just An Accident (625,000), The Brutalist (487,000), Sentimental Value (400,000), The Voice of Hind Rajab (265,000), Arco (434,000) and The Little Sister (385,000).

In an article in the Le Figaro last week pre-empting Wednesday’s figures, the head of France’s independent arthouse cinema theatre association AFCAE David Obadia said 2025 had been a good year for its members.

“It’s our best year in a decade. More than a third of the entries this summer were in our cinemas,” he said, referring to AFCAE’s network of some 1,250 cinemas.

Top Ten Films At French Box Office In 2024 (figs running up to 29/12/2025)