With 2012 well and truly upon us, our Film Programmer, Johnathan Ilott, takes a look back over the past year to see what the top 10 selling films of 2011 were, how our audiences reacted to the screenings and what’s on the horizon for 2012.

In many ways 2011 was an odd year for the cinema programme at The Dukes. There were a lot more hits and misses than usual; films tended to either be smash hits or fail to find an audience, with very little in between. The “middle ground” was also sparse in terms of audience reaction. Several big independent hits proved to be cinematic marmite, The Tree of Life, Melancholia and Kill List in particular evoked undying devotion from some, and hatred from others.

Also on the sparse side for most of the year was mass appeal World Cinema. Perhaps one of the greatest disappointments overall in the Top 10 best selling films here was the lack of world cinema with only The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest making the grade. While French comedy Potiche and Spanish thriller The Skin I Live In both gained respectable audiences, we never found that one breakout hit akin to Coco Before Chanel or last year’s The Illusionist. However, with the wonderful French film The Artist and Norwegian thriller Headhunters on the horizon this will hopefully prove to be only a momentary blip.

Filling the gap, we had a fantastic slate of UK produced films in 2011. The King’s Speech, spurred on by Awards glory, word of mouth and from genuinely being a great film, proved to be one of our biggest hits in over a decade. Submarine, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Jane Eyre and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy also all proved to be massively successful with audiences, while other britpics Senna and Never Let Me Go narrowly missed out on a place in the top ten.

Perhaps the odd one out from all the British films and the list in general is the last Harry Potter film. Unusually for us we booked the film on release date for a lot more screenings than usual in order to make up for a quiet summer. Not our usual programming, but it did provide an interesting change in pace with lots of new audience members coming through the building, and lots of staff members experiencing butterbeer induced sugar rushes.

The remaining spaces in the top ten are filled by three very different films from the US. You don’t quite know what to get from Woody Allen nowadays but his latest Midnight in Paris has been charming audiences up and down the country, Lancaster included. The aforementioned The Tree of Life made the list with the film not facing much competition in the quiet summer months, while ballet horror Black Swan is another film which was helped along by Award nominations and favourable word of mouth reports.

So here is the top 10 selling films at The Dukes in 2011 going by the number of tickets sold:

1. The King’s Speech
2. Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2
3. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
4. Jane Eyre
5. Black Swan
6. We Need To Talk About Kevin
7. Midnight in Paris
8. The Tree of Life
9. Submarine
10. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest