Italian cinema produces twice as many films today compared to three years ago, but the market cannot absorb them: the ratio of earnings per title has collapsed from €1.3 million in 2019 to less than €500,000 in 2025. Italian theaters closed the year with €496.6 million in box office revenue and 68.4 million admissions—still 22% and 30% below 2019 levels respectively—while newly released films surged from 501 to 1,002 in just three years.
These are among the findings analyzed in the report “Italian Cinema: More Films, Fewer Viewers. A New Balance Between Theaters and Digital,” edited by Francesco Baldi, Professor of the International Master in Finance at Rome Business School, and Valerio Mancini, Director of the RBS Research Center. The report also records a rebalancing in distribution, with Italian films and co-productions capturing 32.7% of the box office in 2025 (up from 21.2% in 2019), alongside a major leap in private financing: streaming operators invested €344.4 million in independent European works.
In recent years, supply has expanded at a rate far exceeding demand, leading to greater fragmentation of box office revenues and more intense competition among works for screens, programming, and visibility. The number of new releases, standing at 495 in 2019 and 501 in 2022, reached 1,002 units in 2025: in just three years, distributed titles doubled, while total revenues grew by 61.9% and admissions by 53.5%. Despite this, the ratio of revenues to new releases dropped from roughly €1.3 million in 2019 to under €500,000 in 2025. This indicates that the increase in titles was not matched by a proportional market expansion. “A richer supply can therefore coexist with a reduced average capacity of each work to capture audiences and revenue,” states Mancini.
This decline cannot be explained by ticket prices: the average price of €7.26 in 2025 compared to €6.51 in 2019 (+11.5%) grew less than cumulative inflation over the same period, which exceeded 19%. In real terms, going to the cinema in Italy costs less today than it did in 2019.
For creators, digital transformation does not eliminate the scarcity that governs the cinema market; rather, it shifts its nature. In the traditional model, the scarce resource was screen space; in the digital environment, the scarce resource is audience attention, contested by a practically limitless catalog of content. The growth of streaming does not mean the replacement of the theater, but a progressive differentiation of consumption habits. Theaters retain a function tied to collective experience and a film’s initial theatrical run, while streaming broadens access and extends the commercial life of works.
As of March 2026, paid VOD platforms reached 15.49 million unique users in Italy, up 409,000 users from March 2025 (+2.7%). Netflix reached 9.3 million unique users (+13.1%). Free VOD platforms touched 38.89 million unique users (+4.6%), signaling how online content access now extends far beyond the paid subscription market.
Within streaming, trajectories are diverging: in the first quarter of 2026, Amazon and NOW/Sky saw an increase in usage hours compared to 2022, Netflix showed recovery after a contraction phase, while Disney+ recorded a reduction in total time dedicated by users. According to Q4 2025 JustWatch market share data, Prime Video stands at 25%, Netflix at 24%, Disney+ at 19%, Apple TV+ at 8%, with NOW/Sky and Infinity+ at 6% each.
This means audiences fragment their habits across theaters, subscriptions, digital rentals, free platforms, and television, rather than simply shifting from one channel to another. Nonetheless, theaters maintain a specific role: over 68 million admissions in 2025, stable over the past three years though below 2019 levels, indicate that a substantial segment of the audience continues to recognize a unique value in the theatrical experience compared to home viewing, driven largely by the collective and social nature of going out to the movies. In this space, Italian cinema is also gaining ground against US cinema: the share of box office revenue for Italian films and co-productions rose to 32.7% in 2025 from 21.2% in 2019, while the US share dropped from 65.2% to 40.6%. “The challenge for the Italian system is to ensure this greater diversification does not result in a loss of value for national businesses. The presence of global platforms can increase the demand for Italian content and foster internationalization, but it requires conditions that allow independent producers to maintain adequate autonomy and a fair share of the value generated,” states Baldi.
In 2025, the Fund for the Development of Cinema and Audiovisual Investments was allocated by the Ministry of Culture for a total of €696 million: €412.1 million to tax credits, €37.6 million to automatic contributions, €91.5 million to selective grants, and €110.95 million to promotion. For 2026, the budget drops to €606 million, with €41.7 million allocated to selective grants, of which €4 million is designated for high artistic quality documentaries tied to Italian cultural identity and €0.9 million for short films.
The decline in public funding is accompanied by the growing weight of private players. In 2025, VOD operators invested €344.4 million in independent European audiovisual works destined for Italian audiences—a figure not far off from public selective grants. Platforms now perform functions that go beyond distribution, contributing to project selection, production, financing, and promotion, enabling Italian films to reach much broader international audiences.
According to the authors, this complementarity also carries risks. Platforms possess proprietary recommendation systems and detailed user data, giving them an informational advantage that producers do not always share on equal terms. If platform resources were accessed without an adequate balance in rights and revenue distribution, independent producers could gradually lose autonomy over their exploitation strategies. Producers contribute creative capacity and local supply chain knowledge, while platforms offer distribution networks, user bases, and much greater investment power. For Mancini, “the economic relationship between producers and platforms can therefore be interpreted as a relationship between companies with complementary resources, but also differing levels of bargaining power.”
The authors argue that documentary cinema can perform functions beyond entertainment, acting as a tool for interpreting contemporary society, education, memory-building, and cross-community dialogue. Just as the Venice Film Festival opens—featuring five Italian films in Competition this year—the report dedicates a chapter to social, civic, and current-affairs cinema, the niche targeted by the aforementioned selective fund lines. “Cinema can operate as a form of cultural diplomacy from below, building bridges between institutions, communities, and audiences through concrete stories,” notes Baldi.
The most representative case is War on Education (2024) by Stefano Di Pietro, a documentary on the impact of the war in Ukraine on the educational system. Following its selection at Alice nella Città during the Rome Film Fest, the film was screened at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg and, in March 2025, presented at the European Parliament in Brussels, before being distributed on Prime Video in over twenty countries. According to the report, the value of these works is not measured solely by box office receipts: the journey of War on Education, from festivals to institutions and international platforms, demonstrates how circulation through cultural and institutional circuits can reinforce rather than replace digital distribution, allowing a geopolitical documentary to reach an audience far beyond the domestic market.
The report also cites three other cases in this segment: School of Life by Giuseppe Marco Albano, produced by Groenlandia with Rai Cinema and launched on RaiPlay in 2026; My Father’s Diaries by Ado Hasanović; and Children of the Field by Stefano Di Pietro, filmed in Buenos Aires as part of the European project Football Makes History.
For the authors, the decisive issue for Italian cinema in coming years will be visibility: in a market where content volume grows faster than public consumption capacity, production is no longer enough. Selection, promotion, distribution, and storytelling are essential. A landscape where theaters, platforms, public support, and independent production coexist and integrate rather than replace one another appears to be the most realistic perspective for the sector, provided Italian producers maintain autonomy in rights management and negotiations with digital operators.