Cinema, the fascination of theatrical films in 2026 is back. There is the Zalone effect

It must be the fascination of cinema. It will be the renewed appetite for films in theatres. The figures for the first four months of 2026 outline a positive trend with approximately Euro 213.7 million in box office (+18.9% compared to 2025) and over 28.5 million admissions (+13%). "The January-April period marks the best result in the post-pandemic period," commented Culture Undersecretary Lucia Borgonzoni (Lega) in a note.

Driving the renewed appetite for films in cinemas are films produced in Italia. According to Borgonzoni, 'domestic production grosses EUR 86.4 million (+17.5 per cent on 2025), maintaining a solid market share of 40.4 per cent'.

Many Italians also took advantage of the 1 May holiday to go and see one of the films currently in the programme. This was the 'holiday with the best box office ever, second in attendance only to the figure for 2007, the day Spider-Man was released', noted the note by undersecretary Boorgonzoni. Numbers that, in his opinion, 'show how Italia's cinema is in good shape, and theatres are still at the centre of the public's interest when content of interest, Italian or foreign, is shown'.

A strong push at the box-office at the beginning of 2026 came, among domestic productions, from Checco Zalone's film "Buen Camino" which - according to Cinetel data - from 1 January alone has totalled 40.4 million takings (out of an overall total of 76.5 million considering also the Christmas week of programming) and 5 million admissions (9.5 million overall starting from the first day of programming on 25 December 2025). Just to understand the orders of magnitude in the field, in the 2026 ranking for now behind Checco Zalone is "Super Mario Galaxy the movie": the US-made production had its first screening date on 1 April and has so far grossed in our country almost 13.9 million for about 1.8 million tickets sold in Italian cinema box offices.

In the last week, however, the box office race was driven by the sequel to 'The Devil Wears Prada'. On release since 29 April, it totalled 11.3 million (3 of which or 27% on Saturday 2 May alone) and almost 1.4 million. Behind 'Michael', the film that retraces the date and artistic career of Michael Jackson: in the week from 27 April to 2 May it was seen by just over 672,000 spectators for a total takings of just under 5.4 million, but since its first screening date (22 April) the total takings are 12.2 million in Italia.