Production Starts Up 46% Year-on-Year, But Q1's Shape Is Unusual

The latest edition of the Sohonet Screen Production Index points to a substantial year on year recovery in scripted production activity, with the projected count of new productions entering principal photography in Q1 2026 running 46% ahead of Q1 2025. The figure marks progression from the disruption of the 2023 strikes, although it should be seen in the context of a highly imbalanced Q1, and a weak 2025.

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A Quarter Weighted Toward March

New production starts in February were up 15% on February 2025, and down 18% on the same month in 2022, which remains the peak reference point for the industry. February came in softer than the prior month's projection, with a number of titles pushing their start dates into March and beyond.

The result is a Q1 that is highly front-loaded: 52% of the quarter's projected production value now sits in March alone, highly unusual compared to historical norms (39% in Q1 2025, 35% in 2024, 29% in 2022). The Q1 projection itself has remained relatively stable, within 4% of last month's estimate, but the distribution of that activity has become increasingly condensed in March.

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High-End Slate Building Ahead of Schedule

Despite this year's data being far from complete, our forward pipeline already shows 2% more Large and X-Large productions than were tracked across the entirety of 2025. At the X-Large tier, productions budgeted above $100M, the incomplete 2026 view already represents 91% of the full-year 2025 count.

There has also been a gradual shift in the mix of productions being tracked over the past three months, with Medium-budget titles becoming more prominent and X-Small titles declining in share. We are flagging this as a trend to monitor, given that the sample size remains relatively small.

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A24 Returns to 2024 Spending Levels

Amongst the studio-level analysis, A24 stands out. After a markedly quieter 2025, in which average production budgets dropped to $5.1M, the studio opened 2026 with a cluster of February starts at an average budget of $14.3M, a level last seen in 2024. According to our current data, the committed A24 budget for 2026 already exceeds the full-year 2025 total.

This is potentially a useful indicator of mid-market health, given the studio's concentration in the Medium and Large budget tiers.

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Smoothed Spend Dips, Recovery Expected

A separate metric, smoothed production budget, which spreads the value of each production across its active shoot period to give a sense of total market spend at any point in time, recorded a slight decline in February. We would attribute this to the uneven distribution of Q1 starts, with January and February both running below the monthly average despite being ahead of 2025 comparators. A return to growth is anticipated from March onward, and we would anticipate that this would be sustained through the first half of 2026.

This metric is a useful proxy for the totality of the market at a given point and time. This would reflect a quiet start to 2026, and a likely uptick leading into Q2.

The Sohonet Screen Production Index tracks scripted, live-action productions entering principal photography each month from major studios and production companies across the US, UK, and Canada. A free two-page Snapshot is published monthly; the full Insight report, including regional breakdowns, studio analysis, and forward pipeline data, is available by subscription.

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[Learn more about the Screen Production Index]

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