Largo Winch pulls winter audiences

06/01/2009

Having garnered 1.36m admissions after 19 days on release (€8m in box office takings), young French director Jérôme Salle’s Largo Winch [+see also:
trailer
film profile] made the most of the festive and New Year period mainly dominated by US films.

Launched by Wild Bunch Distribution on 486 screens, the feature – whose audience figures only dropped by 8% in its second week – is still showing on 490 screens. This Pan-Européenne production – also released in Belgium – was successfully sold by Wild Bunch for German-speaking European countries, the UK, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Greece, Portugal, Bulgaria, the Baltic countries, Romania, Switzerland and Turkey.

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Among the European titles, excellent results were achieved at the end of the year by the Scandinavian children’s film Niko and The Way to the Stars [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Michael Hegner and Kari Juusonen, which attracted over 500,000 viewers (€2.94m in earnings) in three weeks (Bac Films - 335 screens). Young audiences also flocked to see Nicolas Bary‘s French/Belgian/Luxembourg co-production The Children of Timpelbach [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which has garnered 575,000 admissions (Pathé Distribution - 306 screens in its third week).

Other successes include Fred Cavayé’s thriller Anything for Her [+see also:
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film profile], which is nearing 600,000 viewers after five weeks (Mars Distribution); and Etienne Chatiliez’s comedy Agathe Cléry [+see also:
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film profile], which has drawn over 1.1m cinemagoers since its release on December 3 (Pathé Distribution).

Among the auteur films, Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s Cannes award-winner Il Divo [+see also:
film review
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interview: Nicola Giuliano
interview: Paolo Sorrentino
interview: Philippe Desandre
film profile] got off to a good start with 40,000 admissions in five days (StudioCanal - 61 screens). Louise-Michel [+see also:
film review
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interview: Benoît Delépine and Gustav…
interview: Benoît Jaubert
film profile] by French duo Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern (Ad Vitam - 92 screens) also enjoyed a successful first week, drawing 112,000 viewers.