27/12/2024 - With his new movie – a Hungarian remake of the Czech hit Women on the Run – the filmmaker once again confirms his undisputed status as the darling of local audiences

With more than 2.5 million cinema admissions to his name, Gábor Herendi is the most successful Hungarian director national cinemas have seen in the past 25 years. He currently boasts four of the ten biggest box-office hits since 1989: Bet on Revenge [+see also:
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film profile] (456,000 admissions in 2017, the best result for a Hungarian film since 2010) and the trilogy A Kind of America (1.4 million admissions overall). And his eighth feature film, Gone Running, which was released on 21 November via Vertigo Media, is perfectly in keeping with its predecessors, having racked up close to 300,000 admissions, which makes it the n°1 Hungarian film of the year and the only European title of the Top 10 for high earners at the 2024 Hungarian box-office.

This Hungarian remake of Martin Horský’s Czech hit Women on the Run [+see also:
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film profile] - which dazzled at the box-office in his home country in 2019 with more than 1.5 million admissions - Gábor Herendi’s romantic comedy Gone Running has got off to a flying start, taking the lead at the box-office as of the very first week of its release (between 21 and 24 November) with 63,933 admissions, a brilliant beginning which was the tenth of its kind for a Hungarian title since 1989 and the second since 2018 and A Kind of America 3 [+see also:
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film profile].

Producers György Kárpáti and Balázs Berta acquired the rights to the remake four years ago and proposed the film to Gábor Herendi. Written by Anna Miklya and Réka Divinyi, the story follows Vera whose husband dies without warning. Determined to honour his last wishes, she decides to run a relay marathon with her three daughters. There’s just one catch: none of them are physically or mentally prepared to take up a challenge of this magnitude… The cast stars Dorottya Udvaros, Rozi Lovas, Beatrix Trill, Sándor Csányi, Márk Ember and Barna Bányai Kelemen, and the film is sold worldwide by NFI World Sales. Vertigo Media, who are also producing the movie (which hasn’t benefited from any public funding), also recently oversaw Nikol Cibulya’s female-focused horror film, Tomorrow I Die [+see also:
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film profile], which earned itself a Special Mention in the Warsaw Festival’s 1-2 Competition (read our news).

American movies dominated the rest of the Top 10 for high earners at the 2024 Hungarian box-office, with Deadpool & Wolverine in pole position (with €3.7m in revenue). Stealing focus among successful Hungarian feature films released in 2024 are Now or Never! by Balász Lóth (863,000 euros in revenue) and Lesson Learned [+see also:
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interview: Bálint Szimler
film profile] by Bálint Szimler (doubly rewarded in Locarno and earning 606,000 euros), Tonight We Kill by Péter Fazakas (232,000) and All About The Levkoviches by Ádám Breier (205,000). As for other European films, the most significant box-office results were obtained by Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things [+see also:
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interview: Suzy Bemba
Q&A: Yorgos Lanthimos
film profile] (353,000 euros), Edward Berger’s Conclave [+see also:
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(Translated from French)