UniFrance box office report: The Artist sets out to win over Chinese audiences.
The Artist has been released in China (China Film Corp.), where its opening weekend proved somewhat uneventful, with 45,000 spectators registered in 3 days from 6,331 announced screenings. This lackluster performance indicates that the film is struggling to stand out from the numerous Chinese hits that dominate the top of the charts in this end of the year period, including the comedy Chinese Zodiac, starring Jackie Chan. Until now, The Artist's critical success has translated into high popularity in Eastern Asian countries. For example, it attracted 392,000 spectators in Japan (Gaga), 120,000 in South Korea (Jinjin), 50,000 in Hong Kong (Edko), and 22,500 in Thailand (United Home Entertainment). Currently credited with a total of 13.3 million admissions outside France, Michel Hazanavicius's film will nonetheless easily top 100,000 admissions in China before the end of its run.
Love has succeeded in earning an additional $128,000 in its second week on North American screens, despite its distributor maintaining a low 3-print release. It consequently posted the second best per-print average of the week, bringing in $42,000, and has now amassed $158,000 since its release (for around 20,000 spectators). Love has attracted close to 1 million spectators in international theaters.
Haute Cuisine registered a respectable opening in Germany (Alamode), pulling in 32,000 admissions after 2 weeks late December. The final quarter of 2012 has not proved highly profitable for French-language productions in Germany. Results for Paris Manhattan (Senator), Zarafa (Alamode), On Air (Alpenrepublik), Sister (Arsenal), and The Minister (Kool) all remained below the 15,000 admissions mark. However, minority French productions shot in a foreign language managed to make their mark, with 100,000 admissions registered by Love Is All You Need (Prokino), 200,000 by Silent Hill: Revelation (3D) (Concorde), and 281,000 by Sammy 2 (Studiocanal).
Matthieu Thibaudault
