Foreign Cinema Updates

We have cinema reports from spies in the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, and Latvia. It looks Narnia is a roaring success around the world.

NETHERLANDS by Lone Islander
Well, just to let you know that Narnia is also the christmas hit in the Netherlands. Buena vista estimates that 73,000 people have watched it here, bringing the gross from the dutch market to 525,000 Euro.

FRANCE by Ciboule
Hi Narnia Web! I just wanna let you know that french site Elbakin.net reports that Narnia has sold more than 1,8 millions of tickets in its first week of release here in France, one of the best performances of the year! Harry Potter and King Kong have been defeated by Aslan!

LATVIA by Tim
Hey I just wanted to give you guys a little update on the foreign box office. Here in Latvia “Narnia” opened on December 23rd and jumped to the top of our local box office. It grossed 12,571 lats which is about the equivalent of 19,988 dollars. It had a total of 4,354 viewers which doesn’t seem like a lot but is when you incorporate the fact that we only have one theater in the capital city and only enough screens to show “Narnia” 4 times a day. That’s an average of 362 viewers a showing which basically means a sell out at every showing. Just wanted to let everybody at NarniaWeb know how things are going in the smaller nations. Kind of like my “Thanks” for all the great updates I got from here!

SWEDEN by Griffle
Local paper Södermanlands Nyheter quotes distributor Buena Vista saying the film was seen by 108,060 people during it’s opening two days. (The Film opened Wednesday December 21st) This is five times as many people as saw King Kong during the same period (21,441 people: Wednesday-thursday) This is considered a big opening in Sweden, which if compared with the US is a very small country in terms of the size of the population. King Kong opened a week or so before LWW in Sweden though and it’s an hour longer which limits how many times it can be shown in a day. The two big national papers in Sweden; Aftonbladet and Expressen were both fairly negative in their reviews of the film. Aftonbladet gave it 3/5 and Expressen 2/5. Aftonbladet did however sell an additional 60 page magazine-style paper with it’s core paper today.

AUSTRALIA by Dooby
“The Australian” newspaper writes that “the first instalment in the child-friendly series The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe took a record $6.583 million on Boxing Day. This makes it the No1 box-office opening day in Australia, beating Peter Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, which took $5.268million on Boxing Day 2003.”

Danyari also sent us this post from Screen Daily about Narnia’s international success:

A number one launch in France saw the film’s opening 20% higher than King Kong’s the previous week. A weekend of $8.7m gave BVI its biggest live action opening to date.

Russia saw the film manage the third biggest opening of all time in the quickly growing market with $3m in three days from 303 screens and $4m in four-days (including December 26).

Italy also outplayed Kong’s opening (by 60% according to BVI) with $3.3m, although, like Kong, it had to settle for third place behind two local comedies led by Christmas In Miami (Natale A Miami).

Singapore was a territory worth marking as the film’s literary origins are all but unknown in the Asian market. Its $1m weekend gave BVI its biggest ever start, some 70% higher than The Incredibles. Fantastic news for BVI and an indicator of how it may play elsewhere in Asia.

Sweden’s $1.5m was also BVI’s biggest ever launch and doubled last week’s Kong opening, while a powerful indicator of major business came in Norway where the film grossed a colossal $550,000 just on its first day.

Australia also showed massive potential as first day figures from December 26 rolled in. Narnia grossed $2.1m to claim the position as second biggest opening day ever in the territory behind only The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers in 2002.