The King’s Choice tops the Norwegian box office, with Norwegian admissions up 10%
- Norwegian director Erik Poppe’s feature generated 423,675 admissions to become 2016’s number one release, contributing to this year’s improved box-office figures
It took just three weeks for Norwegian director Erik Poppe’s new feature, The King’s Choice [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Erik Poppe
film profile],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 20th 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 [+see also:
trailer
interview: Hallvard Bræin
film profile], 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 [+see also:
trailer
interview: Terje Rangnes
film profile], 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.
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