BG Boxoffice Update

The mighty Thor shows his boxoffice muscles

Breaking the trend for comic-based movies to generally underperform in Bulgaria, the relatively unknown Thor booked almost 250,000 leva (including previews) over the weekend, turning into the highest debut of a Marvel title in the country. Of course its sales are boosted by the 3D and IMAX surcharges and the names of Hopkins and Portman always help here, but, still, with no doubt, Thor has scored big in Bulgaria. This, however, will not stop it from plummeting next weekend when Fast Five parks in cinemas. 

With the arrival of Thor, Rio, the chart champion for the last three weeks, had to step back to #2 with a hit of 41%. With respectable 752,684 leva so far, it is not quite clear whether the animated movie will be able to reach one million in its total run. The latter, however, has already been achieved by BG mastodon Love.net, which becomes the second Bulgarian movie to cross the million threshold after the record-breaking Mission London last spring. 

After the relatively low starts last weekend, Lincoln Lawyer retreats only 31% this time around, with a total of 54,988 in its suitcase, while Sammy's Adventures even goes up 2%, proving once again that animated movies have good legs in Bulgaria.

Only one title leaves the top 10 this week and this honour goes to Rango, which slips to #11 with 276,000 leva so far. It is still an animated title, so the chances are it can crawl back in the top 10 once again, but as a whole the chameleon western can be considered a moderate success. On the one hand, for a movie with ugly animals in it, it has made quite a lot of cash, on the other, it boasts the star power of Johnny Depp and an excellent word-of-mouth so its results could have been higher.

Compared to my projections, Thor was clearly underestimated and managed to earn 100,000 leva more than my 150,000 forecast.

Next weekend projections:

Fast Five - 300,000 leva, including previews

Sbogom mamo - 15,000 leva

Hall Pass - 30,000 leva, including previews

(1 lev = USD 0.76/EUR 0.51)