The highest grossing British film at the box office in 2003 was S Club Seeing Double, that’s what an article in The Guardian states quoting the UK Film Council and British Film Institute statistics. According to the RSU Statistical Yearbook 2004/5, Brits went to the cinema more frequently in 2004 than any year since 1972, and a quarter of films they saw were homegrown. In fact, British films were 49% more popular, though how the hell you measure that I’m not sure.
When you start digging what you actually find is that the highest grossing British film of 2004 was Shaun of the Dead, which made £6.69m, and in 2003 the aforementioned S Club made £2.3m. The biggest grocers of 2004 though, were US productions classed as British because they featured a predominently British cast/crew/set of locations. These inlcude Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and Alexander.
I do wish they’d clear some of these things up and set down a set of guidelines for what constitutes a British film, along the lines that 50% or more of the budget must come from UK sources, then we’d get a real picture of the UK film industry and not this pseudo-Hollywood nonsense.
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