We are back with another year of our Movio Audience Awards! Analysing our unique audience data for the top 10 titles for the year of 2023, we have drawn insights into how each of these movies excelled.

In this year’s Movio Audience Awards, we specifically focused on the opening weekends of each film to see which movie brought in the highest frequency audience, the youngest audience, the most premium format sessions, and more.

Most Premium Screen Format Viewings

Among the top films for the year, Oppenheimer took the award for the most Premium Screen Format viewings. With a staggering 39% of its opening weekend sessions playing across premium format sessions, Oppenheimer had almost eight times the average weighting across all titles for 2023.

19% of Oppenheimer’s audience saw the movie in its as-filmed IMAX format on the opening weekend, which alone is more than four times the average across all titles for the year. Other close contenders for the award were heavy-hitting franchise blockbusters and superhero titles, each of which saw impressive proportions of premium format viewings at more than five times the average for 2023.

Youngest Audience: Gen Z’s favourite title

Our second Movio Audience Award looked at the titles that drew out the youngest audience to the cinema. Despite its PG-13 rating, the supernatural horror Five Nights at Freddy’s—which became a surprise phenomenon towards the end of the year—resonated with young moviegoers, as more than half of its opening weekend audience (57%) were aged under 25.

The horror genre tends to attract younger audiences, with the benchmark for moviegoers aged under 25 for horror titles in 2023 sitting at 47%, while the benchmark for all titles is 34%. Likewise, Five Nights at Freddy’s was one of several highly-successful video game adaptations in recent years, which may be attributable to the even greater proportion of young moviegoers in attendance.

In fact, Five Nights at Freddy's had such an interesting opening weekend with its surprise surge of popularity among young moviegoers, that we broke down the opening weekend audience in depth with insights from the Movio Research Console.

Largest Group Admissions

Fellow video game adaptation, The Super Mario Bros. Movie broke more than its fair share of records in 2023, and takes our next Movio Audience Award for bringing in the most group admissions in its opening weekend.

Drawing on the nostalgia of a property that has been beloved for decades, from fans of the original video game to its modern iterations, The Super Mario Bros. Movie saw fans from all generations turning out in groups—with more than half its opening weekend attending it groups of at least three people.

With nearly triple the average proportion of group visitation for movies in 2023, what made The Super Mario Bros. Movie such a group event? With our insights into the age demographics of Mario's audience, it’s clear that the appeal to young moviegoers inspired many families to attend together, with over 60% of moviegoers attending the movie with children (29% aged under 12) in the opening weekend.

Another family-oriented movie, The Little Mermaid, saw similar results of large group admissions accounting for more than half its opening weekend audience. This is mostly likely due to parents and children attending together, and both movies saw over-representation of moviegoers aged 2-11 and 25-44 compared to the benchmarks in Movio’s Research Console.

Highest Average Session Box Office

Our fourth Movio Audience Award went to the title with the highest average session box office in its opening weekend: The Little Mermaid.

The live-action adaptation of the Disney classic generated an average session box office of $43.66 per purchase, an astounding 82% higher than the average across all titles for 2023.

Group admission was a major contributor to this result, given The Little Mermaid was the runner-up for our previous category. All of the top five movies in this category were family-oriented movies attached to long-running IPs. The success of these films in attracting group admissions highlights the importance of catering to a broad audience base, including families and fans of existing franchises, in driving box office success and fostering memorable cinematic experiences for all age groups.

Most Infrequent Moviegoers

Drawing audiences of Infrequent moviegoers (defined as those attended fewer than 2 sessions in the last 6 months) back to the cinemas is an enormous part of maximising box office, and it often takes big titles to bring Infrequent moviegoers back in the biggest numbers.

So it comes as little surprise that this Movio Audience Award goes to The Super Mario Bros. Movie!

In addition to driving the highest proportion of group admissions, The Super Mario Bros. Movie attracted the highest proportion of Infrequent moviegoers on its opening weekend at 51%—an enormous 23% higher than the average for all opening weekends in 2023!

The Super Mario Bros. Movie was a true driver for bringing moviegoers back to the cinema, with 25% of its audience not having visited a cinema in over 6 months prior to attending.

Most Frequent Moviegoers

Finally, we looked at which movie among the top 10 brought out the most of our beloved cinephiles. Our last Movio Audience Award goes to the movie that attracted the most Frequent (attending 6-26 sessions in the last six months) moviegoers: The Flash.

The Flash saw over a third of its opening weekend audience represented by Frequent moviegoers, surpassing Movio’s Research Console’s 2023 benchmark by 4%.

Frequent moviegoers are the people who loved seeing the movies all year round, and display a propensity to see various titles less selectively than other moviegoers. This was evident in the average recency for moviegoers attending The Flash, at 74 days on average since their last cinema visit, 34% less than the 2023 average.

With other blockbusters closely following suit with significant numbers of Frequent moviegoers comprising their opening audiences, this underscores the value of blockbuster titles in driving regular cinema attendance.

More insights are just around the corner

That brings us to the end of our Movio Audience Awards for 2023, but there are always more rich insights to be discovered, especially as more blockbusters return to our screens in 2024. Just around the corner lies Dune: Part Two, with more exciting titles on the horizon. To get more insights like these, follow Movio's Weekend Insights and the Behind the Screens podcast—where we break down the most popular titles and their audiences every week—or learn more about how you can use the Movio Research Console today.