Bulgarian Box Office Update - Weekend 9-11 December

It's a little early for champagne

(And some random thoughts on the cinema distribution in Bulgaria)

Expectedly New Year's Eve brings itself to the top of the Bulgarian cinema charts, with BGN 53,649 in its premiere weekend. It's a relatively soft start but in view of the trends in our multiplexes, it's a sure bet that the movie will draw audiences until the end of the year. Thus, the USD 167,861 end-result of Valentine's Day is definitely within reach.

At #2 and #3 showing for yet another time that animated flicks always have strong feet in Bulgaria, Arthur Christmas slips just 16% and already has BGN 243,425 in its bag, while Happy Feet 2 slides 12% with BGN 119,324 in its freezer.

Last week's number one Immortals can be found at #4 with a decrease of just 29% and the more-than-excellent total result of BGN 793,017. It is followed by Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1, which suffers one of the biggest falls within the top 10 of 48% but already can boast BGN 503,419 in its theatre run so far.

Following a lacklustre start a week ago, Jack and Jill declines by soft 34%. The latest Adam Sandler comedy has made BGN 86,941 so far and is currently at #6. BG hit Operaciq Shmenti Kapeli slows down with just 24% and has BGN 1,071,531 in total at #7.

In its second week Machine Gun Preacher falls 29% and ends at #8 with BGN 54,458. Son of No One collapses in its third week with 53% and ranks #9. It has BGN 73,361 so far.

The top ten is wrapped up by In Time. The surprising hit has earned BGN 545,095 so far and goes down this weekend by 56%.

I should also mention the #16 entry of Drei. The German film was released in a very limited pattern, which justifies its result of just BGN 1,844. Kudos to the distributor for disclosing it.

The top ten is left by Tower Heist. The heist comedy has stolen BGN 198,820 since its release. It's a relatively mediocre result having in mind the premise of the film, which is generally liked by Bulgarian audiences. Tower Heist, however, had the disadvantage to be screened in only one of the two cinema chains in Bulgaria. (Off topic, as all market players, coupled with the illegal download, have put their best in killing the cinema network in the country for the last ten years, we're now left with only two cinema chains having several multiplexes in a few of the biggest cities. Thus, there is no single independent cinema (apart from two arthouse ones) working in Sofia, which automatically means that when a Hollywood film is dropped by the aforementioned chains, it cannot be watched on the big screen any more. Just try to find Harry Potter or even Tintin somewhere! Oh, and the policy of these chains to have inflexible and more or less equal schedules means that a movie disappears in the country as quickly as it appears. (Perhaps, one day I'll write a separate topic about this absurd situation...)

Compared to my last week projections, New Year's Eve came unbelievably close to my BGN 55,000 forecast.

Next weekend's expectations:

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol - 130,000
Something More About Love (BG) - 15,000

(BGN 1 = USD 0.69/EUR 0.51)