Bulgarian Box Office Update - Weekend 23-25 March

Explaining BG distribution was a long story

After debuting with the enormous USD 152m in the USA, Hunger Games tops also the Bulgarian chart but with the quite disappointing BGN 69,152. Regardless of reports for sold-out halls, the movie was more or less killed by the invisible rules of Bulgarian distribution. As there are only two cinema chains in Bulgaria and as behind both of them stands a movie distributor (I rather think this would be a case of anti-monopoly sanctions in the normal countries), it is quite easy to come to a situation like this. Thus, Hunger Games is only screened in the multiplexes of Cinema City (and therefore had only 13 screens), while the cinemas of Arena do not play the movie (reportedly Arena didn't wish to give enough screens to Hunger Games, underestimating its power. However, I still think that the problems lie deeper and especially in the fact that Hunger Games is an independent title, and for such the rules for profit sharing are different). Perhaps now is the time to ask, when actually a third player with its own cinemas will come on the market to shake the things up. I'm not optimistic though...

The unpleasant situation doesn't stop here. The second new proposal of the week The Lorax flops at #4 with almost BGN 30,000. It is one of the worst debuts of a major animated movie lately, lagging even behind Gnomeo and Juliet, while it made twice as low as Horton Hears A Who. The problem once again is the fact that it's a Universal title, so, for reasons unknown, it cannot be played at the Cinema City chain (though distributor Forum Film and Cinema City are related). Thus, The Lorax was only screened in Arena and it may have turned to be insufficient. Oh, the fact that no one here cares about Dr. Zeus is also relevant.

It's not that when a movie is screened in Cinema City and Arena it becomes an instant hit. Therefore, Mirror Mirror comes in at #6 with the low BGN 16,000 and BGN 31,000 including previews. For comparison, Tarsem's last movie Immortals debuted with BGN 172,955. However, we should take into account that usually pictures targeted towards women and young girls have no chances for success in Bulgaria. We do love actions and action comedies after all. 

The top ten in full:

	movie	Change w/w	Result for the weekend (in BGN)	Total result (in BGN)
1.	Hunger Games	new	69,152	69,152
2.	John Carter	-55%	59,337	684,550
3.	The Foreigner	-25%	40,487	122,569
4.	The Lorax	new	29,374	29,374
5.	21 Jump Street	-33%	21,233	81,630
6.	Mirror Mirror	new	16,423	31,803
7.	Rapid Reaction Corps	-37%	13,793	261,118
8.	Journey 2	-24%	12,817	502,384
9.	This Means War	-34%	12,706	397,031
10.	Beauty & The Beast	-63%	7,918	187,735

This week the top ten is left by The Descendants, which expectedly flopped with just BGN 35,910 so far - it's been nominated for Oscars, why to perform better!? Safe House, which despite played only in Arena, managed to collect BGN 261,333, proving my previous statement for action films in Bulgaria. Giving its more serious premise, Bulgaria's Ave struggled to find a bigger audience and retreats with just BGN 29,993.

Compared to my projections, Hunger Games was close to my BGN 75,000 forecast, The Lorax, however, missed my BGN 48,000 expectation, while Mirror Mirror was also considerably below my BGN 52,000 prediction (including previews).

Next weekend's predictions:

Wrath of The Titans - 158,000

(BGN 1 = USD 0.68/EUR 0.51)