11/11/2002 - Just days after Alan Parker's speech to enliven Brit film, five titles: Sweet 16, 28 Days Later, My Little Eye and All or Nothing, are out and doing very well, thank you

Market forces have their own way of proving general assumptions wrong. The UK market is usually largely dominated by Hollywood movies and many British films sometimes wait for years before getting a UK release. But this week, just a few days after the strong speech by Alan Parker, (filmmaker and Chairman of the Film Council) in which he called for subsidies to encourage distributors to release and invest in British films, five British productions, or British co-productions, are actually doing very well indeed at the local box office. They are Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar, Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, Marc Evans’ My Little Eye, Mike Leigh’s All or Nothing and Ken Loach’s Sweet Sixteen.
The extremely positive and unusual fact about these films is that all but one (28 Days Later) were released by independent distributors.
Momentum Pictures is handling two films. Horror feature My Little Eyes, a Working Title production taken over from UIP, is holding steady in its fifth week on release and has grossed £2.7m (Euros 4 million) to date. This surprise hit is still showing on 86 screens after an initial wide release onto 264. Momentum’s other title, Morvern Callar –majority-financed by its mother-company, Alliance-Atlantis - opened on Friday 1 November with a limited release on 17 screens. The film has grossed £82.014 (Euros 123,000) so far, and took the highest per screen average for any film released that week according to Screen International’s box office expert Robert Mitchell.
28 Days Later, released the same day as Morvern Callar had the advantage of a big marketing push and wide release on 318 screens thanks to the muscle of its US distributor, 20th Century Fox. The thriller took over £1.5m (Euros 2.25 million) in its opening weekend (including previews).
All Or Nothing, the first release by UGC Films (French group UGC’s new UK distribution outfit) is still playing in its third week on 53 screens and has totalled £511.000 (Euros 766,000) at the UK box office. Finally, Sweet Sixteen, released by Icon Film Distributors, is in its fifth week out on 33 screens, and has grossed over £684.000 (Euros 1.026 million) in the UK.

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