18/03/2011

The mainstream comedy Gooische vrouwen [+see also:
trailer
film profile] shot to the top of the Dutch box office when it was released last Friday. The success was not exactly a surprise, since the film is not only based on a very popular TV series, but since the carefully calibrated PR machine had already signalled that presales for tickets before the actual release date had already gone through the roof.

The film, directed by second-time feature director Will Koopman, went out on an enormous 140 screens, a number normally only reserved for popular animated films. It made €2.2m over the weekend, with a very impressive screen average of just over €12,000, more than 2.5 times the average of the number two box office title, U.S. production I Am Number Four.

Gooische vrouwen can be described as an intensely Dutch take variation of Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives. The women all live in the chic Gooi area, a Dutch Beverly Hills, which gives the series and film its title (“Women from Gooi”). De Mol plays Cheryl Morero, the wife of a singer who became a sensation out of nowhere, and whose newfound status has him move to the chic neighbourhood where the other women watch the new arrivals with suspicion.

Dutch celebrity Linda de Mol, a talk show host, magazine editor and occasional actress, created the series with director Koopman and screenwriter Frank Houtappels, who both also worked on the film. Koopman’s first film, the thriller The Dark House, also starred De Mol.

The series ended in 2009 after five seasons, and the feature takes the four women to Paris.

The film was released by Independent Films and produced by Talpa Fictie, from De Mol’s big-shot producer brother John de Mol (one of the founders of the Endemol television empire, now co-owned by Mediaset). Column Film and Millstreet Films co-produced.