Bulgarian Box Office Update - Weekend 17-19 Feb

Overwhelmed by the BO success?

Unsurprisingly, the Bulgarian box office was taken by a storm from The Rock and co. as "Journey 2 The Mysterious Island" sails directly to #1 with BGN 120,031. The first Journey finished its entire run with a total of USD 348,722, which means that Journey 2 has still a long way before surpassing its predecessor. The inclusion of The Rock (you know how Bulgarians love his muscles) and the IMAX screening will help it in its mission.

Safe House retreats with the okay fall of 28% to #2 and already has BGN 142,206 on its account, while the second new entry goes in at #3. The Vow, the romantic drama starring Tatum and McAdams, unimpresses with its BGN 21,090 weekend result, and BGN 42,234, including previews. It, however, still has the chance to reach the USD 63,406 final tally of Dear John.

The last new entry can be found at #5. The magnificent War Horse fails to lure many movie-goers as it manages the meagre BGN 15,925 for the weekend. A similar fate recently has also been registered by The Help and My Week With Marilyn, which shows that the current chalga (pop-folk) culture is not interested in quality movies. The others, the non-chalga ones, have either already emigrated or are not willing to go the popcorn-stuffed multiplexes as they have no cinema alternatives. I know it may sound a little far fetched but unfortunately this is the truth and definitely stricter bans on illegal downloads will not improve the situation, no matter what the distributors say. Going back to War Horse, I should also mention that the other Spielberg movie from last year - The Adventures of Tintin - was also a complete flop with just USD 83,000 in its entire run. Spielberg is not the king of these shores, obviously...

And here's the top ten in full:

	movie	Change w/w	Result for the weekend (in BGN)	Total result (in BGN)
1.	Journey 2	-	120,031	120,031
2.	Safe House	-28%	40,968	142,206
3.	The Vow	-	21,090	42,234
4.	Star Wars 3D	-59%	19,659	88,390
5.	War Horse	-	15,925	15,925
6.	Man On A Ledge	-38%	13,871	130,324
7.	Muppets	-35%	11,315	184,310
8.	Puss In Boots	-39%	10,824	1,279,704
9.	Underworld 4	-66%	8,067	468,152
10.	Little Big Panda	-27%	7,956	60,990

This week the top ten is left by One For The Money with the okay total result of BGN 109,552 (for comparison Killers ended its run with the identical USD 76,000); Haywire with the rather good BGN 172,332 (in comparison Contagion made just USD 63,000) and by Chronicle with the relatively weak BGN 69,000 - it is an excellent movie, so the poor figure is not surprising.

Compared to my projections Journey 2 came higher than my BGN 75,000 prediction, The Vow was almost on target with my BGN 48,000 projection, while War Horse managed to deliver only half of my expectation for BGN 30,000. 

Next weekend's projections (traditionally the Oscar weekend is the busiest for our cinemas in the entire year):

Ghost Rider 2 - BGN 95,000, including previews

The Artist - BGN 14,000

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - BGN 12,000

This Means War - BGN 98,000, including previews

The Ides Of March - BGN 13,000

(1 BGN = USD 0.68 = EUR 0.58)