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BOX OFFICE France

Shtis sets new record

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With 17,405,832 admissions, Dany Boon’s Welcome to the Land of Shtis [+see also:
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has as of Sunday evening become the new record holder for best-performing domestic film, outstripping Gérard Oury’s Don’t Look Now - We’re Being Shot At.

At the end of its sixth week on release, the feature starring the director and Kad Merad has already grossed over €102m in box office takings (for a budget of €10.9m) to the delight of its producers (Pathé Renn and Hirsch), co-producers (TF1 Films Productions and the CRRAV) and distributor (Pathé).

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This exceptional performance has also boosted overall audience figures and the market share for domestic films.

According to the National Centre for Cinematography (CNC), the month of March did indeed see the highest audience figures ever reached since monthly records began in January 1980.

With 26.09m admissions, March 2008 clocks in at +49.1% compared to the same month last year. This remarkable upturn enables the film industry to close the first quarter at 61.75m admissions, i.e. a 17.8% increase compared to the same period in 2007.

Thanks to the Shtis phenomenon, the market share for domestic films has risen to 63.7% in the first quarter of 2008 (compared to 56.5% for the same period in 2007) whereas US features have dropped to 30.6% (34.9% from January-March 2007) and other foreign films to 5.8% (8.6% for the first three months of last year).

This French resurgence looks set to continue into April as Fabien Onteniente’s Disco has already attracted 903,000 viewers in its first five days on release (distribution StudioCanal), outranking the unstoppable Shtis, which drew another 705,000 viewers. These two French titles left the US animated feature Horton trailing far behind, with 351,000 admissions in its first week.

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(Translated from French)

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