08/12/2011

With 12.06m admissions in five weeks, i.e. €74m in estimated box-office takings, Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache’s comedy Untouchable [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (see review) is emerging not only as the big hit of 2011 in French theatres, but is now also in 18th place among the best scores of all time at the French box office, a chart topped by Titanic with 20.75m viewers. Produced by Quad and starring Omar Sy and François Cluzet, the film has also already achieved the sixth best total in history for a French film and looks set to eventually join the ranks of Don’t Look Now: We’re Being Shot At (17.27m admissions) and Welcome to the Sticks [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (20.49m) as it forges ahead with a level of success that has hardly waned.

Indeed, audience figures for the film dropped by only 13% in its fifth week, as it attracted another 2m viewers in seven days on a print-run of 789 (distributed by Gaumont), after a fourth week at -6% on 722 prints. As a reminder, it was launched on a 508-print run and it has been number one in the weekly box-office rankings for five weeks in a row. It will be released, among other countries, in Germany on January 5, 2012 and in Spain on March 9.

It’s hard to compete alongside this phenomenal hit that is greedily dominating admissions and screens, but Gaumont is enjoying double success with Olivier Marchal’s gangster film A Gang Story [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which has got off to a good start with a total of 536,000 admissions at the end of its first week on release on a 442-print run. On the other hand, Luc Besson’s The Lady [+see also:
trailer
film profile] is not doing as well as expected with 223,000 viewers in seven days (EuropaCorp Distribution on 332 prints). Finally, there have been impressive results for Robert Guédiguian’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Robert Guédiguian
interview: Robert Guédiguian
film profile], winner of the LUX Prize 2011, which clocks in at 414,000 admissions in three weeks on a 243-print run through Diaphana.

(Translated from French)