French films take 58.4% market share in first quarter

11/04/2007

French film production continues its spectacular box office success. According to data published yesterday by the Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC), domestic titles represented 58.4% of the 52.05m admissions recorded in the first quarter of 2007 in French cinemas.

Outdoing both US productions (38.6%) and those from other countries (6.7%), Gallic titles are riding high in a strong market, with admissions up slightly by 0.4% between January 1 and March 31 over the same period in 2006. This is despite a comparison that includes last year’s box office heavyweight Bronzés 3 [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which was released on February 6 last year and garnered 10m admissions.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

After February’s poor box office figures (15.7% less admissions than 2006), March saw a rise in admissions with 17.7m, 18.4% more than in 2006.

The most successful French titles in the first quarter included Olivier Dahan’s La Vie en Rose [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (see article), which drew over 5m in seven weeks; Gérard Krawczyk’s Taxi 4 [+see also:
trailer
film profile] with 4.6m filmgoers; and Claude Berri’s Ensemble, c'est tout [+see also:
trailer
film profile], with just under 1.2m in two weeks.

Other audience-grabbing titles were Laurent Tirard’s Molière [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (1.1m in nine weeks), Thomas Gilou’s Michou d’Auber [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (900,000 in five weeks) and Valérie Guignabodet’s Dance With Him [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (930,000 in six weeks).

Among the recent releases, Franck Mancuso’s crime drama Counter Investigation [+see also:
trailer
film profile] has clocked up 900,000 admissions in four weeks, while André Téchiné’s The Witnesses [+see also:
trailer
film profile] has attracted 350,000 to screens in the same period.