30/12/2003

After battling throughout the Christmas holidays, on December 28 Il paradiso all'improvviso (Medusa) finally overtook Natale in India (De Laurentiis) at the Italian box office. The film by Leonardo Pieraccioni took €1,875,989 while the film by Neri Parenti reached ticket sales worth €1,729,662. The Xmas film produced by De Laurentiis was in the number one slot until December 27, also thanks to the larger number of copies on release (507 as opposed to the 347 prints for Pieraccioni). In the meantime, Medusa announced it would be doubling of the number of prints, to consolidate the film’s performance: from next week end the number of copies increase from 347 to 600.

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Durino the long Christmas break, the Boldi-De Sica couple, starring in Natale in India, won the challenge thrown down by the Fiorentine comedian: taking €6,414,740 in the weekend just finished, bringing the film’s total takings to €14,914,764. But when compared with 2002, this De Laurentis Xmas film didn’t do as well: Natale sul Nilo took €17,449,000 in 10 days.

In 3rd place in the box office for the Christmas weekend there’s the Disney animation film, Finding Nemo, taking a further €3,108,581, giving the film a total of €16,162,452. There are obviously a fare smattering of other American films in the top ten: in 4th place there’s Master and Commander by Peter Weir, at number 5 there’s the comedy starring Julia Roberts Mona Lisa Smile. At number 6 there’s Nicole Kidman-Anthony Hopkins in The Human Stain, followed by In the cut by Jane Campion. In 8th position there’s another Italian Xmas production, Ho visto le stelle by Vincenzo Salemme. The top ten closes with Looney Tunes Back in Action and the DreamWorks animation film, Sinbad.

(Translated from Italian)