It took just three weeks for Norwegian director Erik Poppe’s new feature, The King’s Choice [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Erik Poppe
fiche film],to sell 423,675 tickets domestically (for Nordisk Film Distribusjon – read the news) and become the top-grossing film on this year’s charts, outdoing US director Thea Sharrock’s romantic drama, Me Before You, which recorded 406,511 entries for SF Norge, and US animated adventure comedy Ice Age: Collision Course by Mike Thurmeier and Galen T Chu, which had an audience of 375,902 for 20^th Century Fox Norway.

Norway’s official candidate for the Oscar nomination for Best Foreign-language Film registered the best opening for a film in Norway this year and the fifth best ever for a Norwegian feature. It added to the current 10% increase in Norwegian theatrical admissions in 2016. So far 9,508,801 Norwegians have visited cinemas, as opposed to 8,658,443 in 2015. Box-office income is up 14%.

“It is impressive that The King's Choice is heading the charts after only three weekends with such a lead,” Guttorm Petterson, the managing director of Norwegian cinema association Film & Kino, said. “It is also gratifying to see that admissions continue to increase, and, with some strong Norwegian audience pleasers coming up in the next months, it seems it will be another good year for Norwegian cinema.”

On 12 October, Norwegian director Hallvard Bræin’s Børning 2: On Ice [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
interview : Hallvard Bræin
fiche film], the sequel to his 2014 local take on Cannonball Run, opened, featuring a cast of Anders Baasmo Christiansen, Sven Nordin, Jenny Skavlan and Otto Jespersen as the leads. The second film is the series was produced, without state support, by veteran Norwegian producer John M Jacobsen, of Filmkameratene. This time around, the race goes through Sweden and Finland, all the way to Murmansk in Russia.

According to Patterson, other promising Norwegian family features include Terje Rangnes’ Carpenter Andersen Meets Santa Claus [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
interview : Terje Rangnes
fiche film], from Fantefilm Fiksjon, which will be released on 11 November, and Rasmus A Siversten’s fully-animated In the Forest of Huckybucky, based on Thorbjørn Egner’s children’s classic, which Qvisten Animation has scheduled for a 25 December premiere.