During the May holidays, Russian cinemas took in just over 1 billion rubles, compared with 1.5 billion rubles in the same period a year earlier. Attendance also declined, from 3.7 million to 2.5 million viewers. This was reported by Kommersant.
The newspaper does not specify how sharply attendance and revenue fell compared with the first third of April, when Western films were in release. The comparison is made with the previous May holidays, when cinemas were also showing mostly Russian titles.
According to Rifat Fazlyev, editor-in-chief of Cinemaplex, even a 10% increase in ticket prices failed to make up for the downturn. In his view, Russian patriotic films did not attract significant audience interest.
What cinemas showed during the holidays
From May 1 to May 10, cinemas again declined to screen foreign films that do not have an official rights holder in Russia, saying the move was intended to support domestic filmmaking. During that period, audiences were not shown major Western premieres, including the biopic “Michael” about Michael Jackson and “The Devil Wears Prada 2”.
Instead, lineups consisted almost entirely of Russian films, including the drama “Kommersant” starring Alexander Petrov, as well as the war films “Angels of Ladoga” and “Litvyak”.
Context
For the third year in a row, Russian cinemas have built their May holiday programs around almost exclusively domestic films. In both 2024 and 2025, the decision by cinema chains to forgo Western films did not deliver the expected box office returns. Companies later returned to the practice of “pre-screening services” — the pirated screening of Western films.