Telefilm Canada has released its annual report on moviegoing and distribution in Canada.
The trend continues to be dire.
Canadian films accounted for only $14M of $837M box office revenue, or just 1.7%.
That 1.7% doesn’t do justice to French-language films though, which garnered 13%, leaving Canadian English-language films at just 0.4%. Less than half of one percent!
(Telefilm does attempt to put a better spin on this by breaking out “independent films” from “major Hollywood productions”, but to no avail.)
Only three Canadian films made more than $1M revenue at the box office.
“The summer comedy Menteuse stood out, achieving box office revenue of over $2.6 million. The children’s films Ma belle-mère est une sorcière and Night of the Zoopocalypse round out this trio, both having generated box office revenue of over $1.1 million in Canada.”
The top ten films at the box office were all Hollywood productions.
“Of all the films screened in Canadian theatres, the feature film A Minecraft Movie, based on the popular video game, stood out with box office revenue of almost $45 million in 2025. This was followed by Jurassic World: Rebirth and Superman, which both surpassed $30 million. Apart from F1: The Movie, all the top ten titles were sequels or adaptations based on existing intellectual property.”
The figures are from the Movie Theatre Association of Canada.
My take: I don’t begrudge Telefilm its $100M+ budget, but I submit that something is wrong with this picture. Either project selection is not taking the cinema-going audience in mind, or there’s not enough marketing happening, or both. If we truly want a national cinema and not just a feature film service industry for foreign producers, I can think of a few things that have to happen: a screen quota, lower budgets, a tax credit for film investors, a star system, a Canadian film media; all working together to create a meritocracy that makes movies Canadians want to watch in Canadian theatres, eh!
