Interview. Cinémoviking, in Saint-Lô: “We’re having a very good start to the year, not like in 2025”

Clément Jodocius is the director of Cinémoviking, in Saint-Lô (Manche), a cinema with nine rooms. The year 2026 promises to be a prosperous year for cinema. Encounter.

The year 2025 has been complicated for cinema. You have felt it locally, how is this first half of 2026 going?

It’s the complete opposite of 2025. We’re off to a very good start to the year, with attendance at a high level, except perhaps in April, where the sunny weather kept the public away from the theaters. We recorded +27 to 28% compared to last year.

How do you explain this very good start to the season compared to 2025?

The main reason is the presence of films that attract audiences while in 2025, it was a poor year in terms of releases. At the start of the year, films like “The Marsupilami” and “Michael”, the biopic on Michael Jackson, filled the theaters.

How is the rest of the year shaping up?

Even better, with an incredible number of highly anticipated films like “De Gaulle”, the two-part biopic, “Scary Movie”, “Toy Story 5”. But also the “Minions”, “Spider-Man”, “Paw Patrol” or the new Spielberg.

In November and December, there are going to be so many big releases that I don’t even know how I’m going to get them all and keep them around, even with nine theaters!

What are these end of year films?

The new “Avengers”, “Dune 3”, “Jumanji 4”, the new Disney, the last Asterix… Heavy stuff. It’s incredible all these releases at the same time, while in 2025, it’s as if the year had not existed for cinema. In terms of attendance we did less well than in 2021, a year impacted by Covid. Since the release of “Avatar 3” in December 2025, audiences have found their way back to cinemas. They saw the trailers, and they said, that looks good, what if we go to the movies…?

What attendance figures do you hope for this successful year?

I tell myself that with this incredible programming, we can exceed 300,000 spectators, like before Covid.

That would be great. Afterwards, we must also take into account a key factor: the weather. When the weather is nice, people logically go less to the cinema.

Which films are showing at Cinémoviking at the moment can you recommend to us?

I would say “Compostelle”, with Alexandra Lamy, which worked well, but also “For Pleasure”, which we have just programmed, with the same actress. I haven’t seen it yet but people are laughing a lot in the room. That’s a good sign.

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