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BOX OFFICE Germany

Vicky the Viking sequel falls short of smash hit status

by 

Vicky and the Treasure of the Gods, the Vicky the Viking [+see also:
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]
follow-up launched last Thursday on German screens by Constantin, dominated last weekend’s rankings, with 280,000 admissions, outstripping Men in the City 2 [+see also:
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(170,000 viewers). Next in line were US comedy Friends With Benefits, Paul W.S. Anderson’s The Three Musketeers [+see also:
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and actor Matthias Schweighöfer’s debut directorial film What a Man.

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This result is, however, far from satisfactory. Besides the Indian summer which has certainly discouraged audiences from going to the cinema, the disappointing performance of the second instalment in the adventures of the shyest and most fearful, yet most intelligent, young Viking recalls the recent example of Men in the City 2. The fall is especially hard for Constantin as Vicky the Viking, directed by highly popular comedian Michael "Bully" Herbig and also launched in the month of September (on September 9, 2009), clocked up 1.25m admissions in its first weekend before claiming fourth place in the year’s German box-office charts with almost 5m viewers (topped only by Avatar, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince [+see also:
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).

In Vicky and the Treasure of the Gods, produced again by Christian Becker for Rat Pack Filmproduktion but this time directed by Christian Ditter (who scripted and directed the first two instalments of The Crocodiles [+see also:
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), Halvar, Vicky’s father, is worried about seeing his son one day become a man – a currently popular theme in German mainstream cinema which is explored in several of the aforementioned new films. When Sven the Terrible abducts Halvar, Vicky has the chance to show his courage and be in command of the clan. Now that summer is fading away, we hope that his brave efforts will convince more cinemagoers at the same time.

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(Translated from French)

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