Season slacks off, no title with drawing power

by Camillo de Marco

01/12/2006 - "The situation is troubling. There has been a serious drop in admissions at this stage of the season", said Paolo Protti, president of ANEC, the Italian exhibitors association.

Italian cinemas seems to be missing that local title capable of drawing in audiences, if it is indeed true that the sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Mans’s Chest by Gore Verbinski, with almost €20 in 11 weeks, has grossed €5m more than the overall gross (nearly €15m) of the 16 Italian films currently screening in the cinemas monitored by Cinetel.

This has been changed somewhat by the latest entry, Anplagghed al cinema by comic trio Aldo, Giovanni e Giacomo, which grossed just over €2m from its opening weekend.

Of the 16 Italian films in cinemas, only five titles – I>Anplagghed al cinema, The Unknown [trailer] by Giuseppe Tornatore (nearly €3.5m), Golden Door [trailer, film focus] by Emanuele Crialese (€2.27m), N.: Napoleon & Me [trailer] by Paolo Virzì (just over €1m) and A casa nostra [trailer] by Francesca Comencini (€1.84m) – have grossed over €1m.

For Protti, the question is also a demographical one: "The problem is that we continue working for the same audiences. The challenge lies in winning over new spectators. Italy is particularly difficult with respect to France and Great Britain because we don’t have enough young people from the ages of 15-24, who are the biggest cinema-goers. In our country, in fact, there are only 3.5m people in that age group, against 6m in Great Britain and 5m in France".

(Translated from Italian)