BG Boxoffice Update - Weekend 6-8 May

Hitting the #1 slot was never so easy for these two.

Perhaps no-one would be surprised to see the latest Fast & Furious flick arriving atop the Bulgarian boxoffice this weekend. The fifth instalment of the franchise is not only deemed the best in the series so far, but has already been the most profitable worldwide. In our humble country, the Diesel/Rock/Walker vehicle cashes in some 198,963 leva over the weekend period, which despite being the second highest result of the year so far cannot be seen as something so extraordinary. However, before making any final judgements, let's just say that including its full week of previews, Fast Five has made a total of 379,391 leva, which means that the one million barrier is definitely within reach. And believe me, it would be carried forward by an excellent word of mouth. I personally do not remember a movie to have earned such an enormous amount of money in its preview run, which just shows how preloaded the demand for the action adventure was. We should also not forget that the title is not screened in the Cinema City multiplex chain, which automatically deprives it from at least 100,000 leva in its first weekend. Don't know what the point of all this Universal/BG distributor game is, but it's definitely not a win-win scenario.

Last week's #1 Thor remained top choice of all fans of the aforementioned cinema chain, so not surprisingly it slides by a mere 34% to #2, where the mighty god of thunder can marvel (look what I've done here:)) at its 550,162 leva total boxoffice so far. Who says now that Bulgarians are not fans of the comic movie genre?

At #3 animated 3D hit Rio stands still, losing zero percent, and singing over a total of 849,768 leva in its cage. 

The second highest new entry of the week can be found at #5, where Hall Pass, the latest offering of the Farrelly brothers can congratulate itself with 26,488 leva for the weekend and 45,723 leva including preview screenings. Not the best result out there, but the fact that it has no strong A-list power (sorry Owen) and is a considerably late premier for Bulgaria (many fools have already downloaded it!), is quite an achievement if you ask me. The latest Adam Sandler movie, Just Go With It, also started with around 30,000 leva and at present stands pretty at #10 with 209,000 leva so far. 

Apart from Fast Five, the most talked over new offering of the week was of course Sbogom Mamo. All the controversy surrounding the latest Bulgarian title wasn't much of a help as the movie says hi to the chart at #7 this week with just 11,880 leva. And it's the premise and the killing competition that stopped it from being another BG monster, rather than the negative press which the Michelle Bonev film attracted.

Three titles leave the top 10 this weekend led by Source Code, which has made the more-than-respectable 136,037 leva so far. For a non-major Hollywood title and zero promotion, we should be only happy that so many viewers watched it. Those who missed it can only regret.

The Rite, the one of the two movies this week in which Tony Hopkins is not a god, slips to #12 with 135,920 in its Vatican accounts -- also a good result for a horror film and a late Bulgarian premier.

Those last sounds you hear this week are the screams of the Bulgarian distributor of Scream 4, as the title goes out of the first ten with just 55,854 leva. And it was a world premier!

Compared to my projections, Fast Five missed it with some 80,000 leva, though I'm still proud of my 300,000 leva forecast. At the same time Hall Pass came close to my 30,000 leva expectation, but excluding previews, while Sbogom Mamo was also close to the 15,000 leva forecast.

Next weekend projections:

Water For Elephants - 35,000 leva

Priest 3D - 65,000 leva, including two days of previews

(1 BGN =  USD 0.76/EUR 0.51)