23/09/2005

With 12 new titles this week, including four European productions, competition will be particularly stiff for UK distributors this week as screens are already busy with last Friday’s 14 openers, including Working Title’s Pride And Prejudice [+see also:
trailer
film profile] which –as expected-stormed to the top of the UK box office, grossing over £2.5m (€ 3.7m) from nearly 400 screens last weekend.

This week’s big European release is Guy Ritchie’s UK gangster movie Revolver produced by Luc Besson and Pierre Spengler for EuropaCorp (which also handles international sales) and Revolver Pictures Co. The film is Redbus Film Distribution’s biggest release so far with over 350-400 prints across the UK and Ireland. The company is betting on the success of Guy Ritchie’s previous Lock, Stock And Two Barrels and Snatch, and is hoping to attract the same young male audience still queuing to see the current UK gangster hit: Nick Love’s The Business released by Pathe three weeks ago, which has grossed over £1.2m (€ 1.8m) so far and is still playing in over 100 screens. But Redbus will have to rely heavily on its strong marketing campaign for Revolver and hope that the very negative press reviews and cold welcome to the film’s premiere last Tuesday in London’s Leicester Square, will not deter UK audiences from seeing it.

On the arthouse front, Dogwoof Pictures is also releasing its biggest title so far: the Danish hit and international award-winning film King’s Game by Nikolaj Arcel. The film will benefit from a 15 prints run (including 8 in London), which is considered a big release for a foreign language film in the UK. According to Anna Godas, Head of acquisitions, Dogwoof has based its strong PR and press campaign on the media debate inherent to the film’s subject matter. "We decided to play down the nationality of the film and insist on the intelligent and challenging subject matter," she said. "This was necessary to try to reach a wider audience, and to get access to the P&A support from the UK Film Council which is based on a film’s cross-over potential." "To get the word of mouth going, we screened the film very successfully to the House of Parliament in London and also organised a preview with all political correspondents from the press to discuss media manipulation" continues Anna Godas. "We also set up two websites, a King’s Game one and another one called ‘Truth or spin.com’. So far, the reviews have been very positive," she said with confidence.

Matcine, a small arthouse distributor targeting specifically the over 40s audience, is releasing today two films by Italian filmmaker Silvio Soldini: the 2000 hit Pane e Tulipani and his more recent film Agatha And the Storm, both starring Licia Maglietta. The two films are released at the Riverside Studios cinema in London, and two independent regional cinemas will also play Pane e Tulipani which has a higher profile according to Tony Carr, Head of Matcine. Carr waited five years to release Soldini’s winner of 9 Davide di Donatello in 2000 (Italian Oscars), a film rejected by all main UK exhibitors in spite of its box office success in many other European territories. Now the film is finally out and Carr is thankful to those independent art-house cinemas in the UK that believe in the film and have booked it until the end of the year.