Nominations Announced for Second Annual ECA Awards

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Thu, 09/25/2014 - 12:14 -- Nick Dager

Nominations announced for Second Annual ECA AwardsThe Event Cinema Association has announced the nominations for its Second Annual ECA Awards. The ceremony will take place at the ECA Conference on October 16 at the Genesis Cinema in London. The awards, which are sponsored by Rentrak, recognize the box office achievements that the event cinema industry has made over the last twelve months.

In addition there will be awards for excellence in two key areas – programming (aimed at content providers and distribution) and exhibition (for cinemas). A multitude of records have been set, broken and set again repeatedly in an unparalleled year for this sector.

Melissa Cogavin, managing director of the ECA said,  “It’s so important in this growing area to give credit where it’s due, and recognize the incredible achievements that are becoming more and more frequent in the event cinema market. The last twelve months has seen some truly extraordinary and groundbreaking progress made at the box office for event cinema and the ECA is delighted to do what it can to raise the profile of these achievements and help grow the business so everyone benefits.”

The Award season runs from May 31, 2013 to June 1, 2014 and nominations this year include the British Museum’s record-breaking Pompeii Live in June 2013. The museum emerged several years ago with its Leonardo Live exhibition and, with Pompeii Live, proved naysayers wrong as admissions at the museum actually increased further to the release in cinemas; audiences saw the cinema release, then went to the real exhibition itself, thereby viewing it twice. Worries about cannibalization proved groundless after all. 

Other nominations include the National Theatre Live’s stunning War Horse; the ENO’s critically acclaimed Peter Grimes, Henrik Ibsen’s play Ghosts, which was the world’s first Dolby Atmos event cinema release; the unique Canonization of the Pope Live in 3D; and the excellent Monty Python’s (Almost) Live from the o2.

Exhibitors among the nominations include John Travers from Cineworld, Kevin Markwick from the Picture House Uckfield, Carmike Cinemas in the U.S. and Dorothy Smith of art house cinema Zeffirellis in Ambleside, Lake District.

The ECA also awards excellence at the box office for members of the ECA achieving 100k, 250k and 500k admissions at the box office. After such a stellar year this category will be very buoyant indeed.

Lucy Jones, business development director at Rentrak, the ECA Awards sponsor said, “The growth of the event cinema industry has escalated very quickly and at Rentrak we are supporting its growth by reporting on it initially in the UK and Ireland, though this is now available throughout Europe.  Rentrak is delighted to do what it can to augment the growth of this industry by partnering with the ECA and recognizing excellence across the board.”

There will be some serious contenders for awards this year with numerous high profile and high achieving releases hitting headlines over the last 12 months. BBC Worldwide’s Dr Who: Day of the Doctor which saw cinemas gross $10m in 3 days worldwide, the Back to the Future Secret Cinema event in London grossed £4m in its 4 week run, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Richard II made headlines as did Andre Rieu’s 10th Anniversary Concert, Matisse Live, Monty Python and the continuing box office smashes by NT Live. Box office attendance has grown in some particular instances to occupy as much as 25 percent in some independent cinemas in the UK.  That means one in four tickets sold is for an event cinema release.

Full details of the nominees can be found on the ECA website.

Register now for the ECA conference on October 16 here.

Event Cinema Association http://www.eventcinemaassociation.org/