BG Boxoffice Update

(full of off-topics)

Hm, where is 127 Hours this week?

Expectedly, the latest BG hit Love.net ruled the weekend boxoffice in its first week of release. With almost 190,000 leva over the three days, the title ranks as the second most successful Bulgarian début in recent history, next to the 355,000 leva of Mission London registered last spring. The latter was however released with twice as less screens, which means that Love.net is actually not so huge as its distributors, sponsors and makers have wished for. Guys, let's not undervalue the support of NOVA tv, but it is not btv (and this is not a compliment to btv - one of the worst mistakes in the Bulgarian democracy). Still, the fact that Love.net scored the best début this year in Bulgaria's cinema's, albeit zero (Hop) competition, is quite an achievement.

As regards to the PR stories, which some colleagues have already been quick enough to publish without paying attention, I may say that sentences such as that Love.net has surpassed titles including The Tourist, The King's Speech, The Social Network, the last Harry Potter and Black Swan are more than stupid. You cannot compare a BG title, which is not available on the Internet, has enormous promotion with at least 20 sponsors (including the giant Mtel, which should finally get the bills of its clients in order rather than spending enormous amounts of cash on stupid advertising) and most of all is played on 33! screens with the aforementioned movies. And since when the success of a film in Bulgaria means that it is good? Actually, among the said titles, even the extremely bad The Tourist had Angelina and Depp!

A clear sign that the audiences sought alternatives this week is the minor fall registered by all major releases as compared to last week's results. Previous champion Limitless lost a slight 11%, while Just Go With It decreased 14%. At the same time Mars Needs Moms rose 4%, while Rango fell by only 4%, which means that animated movies were once again on the viewers' agenda. And the fact that the spring school holiday has started only underlines the pointless decision not to release pics such as Hop or Wimpy Kid 2 in Bulgaria. Clearly, in this period they would have been major hits...

And last, the other new release in the chart (there were two more new films, whose distributors do not care to provide boxoffice details) comes in at #19. With a poor 1,047 leva, 127 Hours, one of the best movies last year, crashed at the lower end of the countdown. Yes, it has only one screen, but still its performance is really a complete disaster.

Compared to my last week's projections, Love.net came close to my 200,000 leva forecast, while 127 Hours was nowhere near it (oh, what was I thinking).

Next weekend's projections:

Rio - 130,000 leva

The Rite - 30,000 leva (including previews)

Source Code - 35,000 leva