A shrinking slice of the box office
The numbers NICE is working with are stark. Canadian films made up just 1.7% of the country's total box office revenue in 2025, down from 2.8% in 2024. In dollar terms, domestic Canadian film box office totalled $13.9 million in 2025, a 40% drop from $23.5 million the year before.
NICE director Sonya Yokota William put it plainly: "Canadian films are routinely the films that miss out," she said, describing a pattern where homegrown titles lose out in programming decisions again and again.
Full-show contracts named as a culprit
A big part of the problem, according to NICE's own research, comes down to contract terms rather than a lack of interest. So-called full-show commitments require a cinema to dedicate every time slot on one screen to a single film for a set period, sometimes as long as four weeks, and studios behind major blockbusters use them most often. In a study of 16 Ontario cinemas, these commitments were cited in 23.8% of the 185 instances where a Canadian film wasn't booked. The effect shows up clearly in the data: cinemas without full-show commitments booked Canadian titles at four times the rate of cinemas mostly locked into them.
The study ran from February 6 to March 26, 2026, and its box office figures show what's at stake when a Canadian film does get a real run. "Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie" grossed $60,207 at the 16 cinemas that provided data, while "Montreal, My Beautiful" brought in $34,624 at the same venues, proof that audiences will show up when the films get screen time.
It's not only the contracts
NICE's research also points to reasons closer to home for programmers. The single most common explanation cinemas gave for skipping a Canadian film was that other films simply had more audience appeal, cited in 41.6% of cases. Close behind was a more basic problem: programmers being unaware the Canadian movie existed at all, cited in 34.6% of cases where a film wasn't booked. That combination, restrictive studio contracts on one side and an awareness gap on the other, is what NICE says needs to change if Canadian films are going to compete for space on screens.
What it means for Ottawa moviegoers
Independent cinemas are already doing the heavy lifting for Canadian film box office, and the data suggests that when local screens have the freedom to program a Canadian title without a studio's full-show contract standing in the way, audiences respond. The question NICE is putting to the industry now is whether studios will loosen their grip enough to let that happen more often.
Sources: CP24 (Canadian Press), Lethbridge Herald (Canadian Press)
