17/10/2002 - Danish Film Institute estimates year-end ticket sales will reach 13 mn, to date, 2.3 million tickets were sold for local productions

It looks like this is going to be a record year for Danish cinemas. Not since 1983 have ticket sales been anywhere near the 9 million admissions reported for the first 9 months of 2002. Fully 2.3 million tickets were sold for local productions. The Danish Film Institute foresees that total ticket sales for 2002 are likely to reach the 13 million-mark, a significant increase on last year’s 11.9 million.
What are the reasons? There is no doubt that locally made films contributed hugely to luring Danes to the movies. A children’s movie entitled My Sister’s Kids in the Snow - the follow-up to last year’s My Sister’s Kids (attendance: 400,000) – was just released and sold 51,000 tickets. Both films were produced by Moonlight Filmproduction, the company behind another of this summer’s Danish hits: Old Men in New Cars (attendance:340,000). Up until now no major Hollywood production – and they include titles like Signs, The Bourne Identity and Stuart Little 2 - has managed to outperform Susanne Bier’s local hit Open Hearts. This film has been on general release for six weeks and is Denmark’s most popular film with ticket sales at around the 400,000-mark.