10/12/2010

The long December bank holiday, which began last Friday and ended with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on Wednesday, met with expectations (see news), bringing in an estimated €20m in box office takings.

Even though almost all the week’s releases performed well, we must emphasise the exceptional role played by Spanish films (perhaps because their success never seems guaranteed). Both the two new releases (Three Meters Above the Sky [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Biutiful [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]) and the two films already enjoying a strong run at the box office (Julia’s Eyes [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Among Wolves [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) did very well and enabled Spanish cinema to achieve the best market share of the year (37%).

The four films were among the weekend’s ten most popular, led by Fernando González Molina’s Three Meters Above the Sky (the remake of the Italian hit 3 metri sopra il cielo) in second place with €4m in takings. Moreover, the film emerged as the best Spanish release of 2010 (2.1m in its first weekend). However, its circumstances (a very particular audience, scant critical approval, poor word-of-mouth) mean it will probably have a short box office life.

The opposite is true for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful, in fifth position with €780,000 (which could reach €1.5m by Wednesday). This adult drama will receive much attention in the forthcoming weeks thanks to the announcement of nominations for awards like the Golden Globes and the Goyas, where Javier Bardem’s performance won’t go unnoticed.

In sixth position, Among Wolves continues to surprise everyone. Gerardo Olivares’s film saw the week’s lowest drop in takings and amassed €1.28m in ten days, amounting to €1.5m for the whole of the bank holiday break. Guillem Morales’s Julia’s Eyes saw a rather steeper decline, falling to ninth place with total box office earnings of €6.25m.

(Translated from Spanish)