BG Boxoffice Update - Weekend 13-15 May

An elephant is not a boxoffice, Reese!

No surprises this weekend as Fast Five spends a second week on the top of the Bulgarian boxoffice. With a fall of 43% and a total of 654,983 leva in its safe, the fifth and now officially the best instalment of the Vin Diesel/Paul Walker extravaganza is quickly speeding towards the one million leva barrier. A quick look shows that the previous movie from the series earned above USD 380,000 in its entire run, which has already been surpassed by Fast Five. The latter is now also the most successful title of Universal in the recent movie history in Bulgaria. And we all know how the studio loves us over here...

Naturally, the Fast Five supremacy will come to an end next weekend due to one Captain Sparrow. The biggest loser, however, is going to be Thor, which now can congratulate itself with the second place and a total of 694,289 leva under its cloak but will have to lose most of the 3D screens on Friday. This directly means that there probably will not be a million leva account for the Marvel hero.

But let's get back to the current boxoffice. The highest new entry comes in at #3, where vampire flick The Priest conjures up a total of 65,328 leva, including two days of previews. Last year's Legion attracted USD 55,000 in its entire run, which the new Paul Bettany/Scott Stewart collaboration will have no problems beating. The figures, however, cannot be compared directly as The Priest has offered its vampires in 3D, which of course means more bucks per viewer. Unfortunately, the two titles have something in common - an extremely low quality, which will more or less lead to a poor word-of-mouth and thus kill the movie soon.

The last new entry of the week can be found as low as number seven. The lavish adaptation of Water For Elephants stumbles there with the miserable and non-elephant result of 10,732 leva, showing that contemporary cinema goers prefer fast cars than slow-burning romances. And the fact that it's based on a famous novel and that star Robert Pattinson even had a birthday on Friday didn't give the movie much power...

Looking at the top ten drop-outs is a little bit tough this week as Limitless has strangely disappeared from the overall boxoffice. Perhaps its distributor was too busy buying new and exciting independent titles than to provide any figures...* It is, however, certain that Just Go With It, the latest and extremely successful Adam Sandler comedy, leaves the first ten with the more-than-excellent total of 214,000 leva.

Compared to my projections, The Priest hit exactly my forecast of 65,000 leva (yes, I can be good at this), while Water For Elephants was clearly overestimated and missed my projection with almost 25,000 leva (yes, I can suck at this).

Next weekend's projections:

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - 450,000 leva, including previews.

(1 BGN =  USD 0.73/EUR 0.51) 

* No irony intended :)