This Week in Australian Cinemas + Oz Box Office Report

Time to see whether Australian distributers are playing the game at hand or merely playing catch up. SHOCK! This week is pretty good in terms of release dates. But the movies themselves don't really get my blood pumping except for one that I really want to see and another than should be a mere passing enjoyment (perhaps).


The Da Vinci Code, dir. Howard
Duh, we all know what this one is so no need to discuss it. True, I don't want to read the book because it will "ruin the movie". I'm a movie person y'all. I'd rather see a movie. I know that's "uncultured" or whatever but it's true. Althought I love me some Audrey Tautou, I remember when Julie Delpy wanted the role "The character is French, in her thirties and has a shade of red in her hair. I can become a redhead." - why wasn't she cast? Oh well. I'm sure I'll see this.

Ballet Russes, dir. Geller & Goldine
One of my friends, Joy, would absolutely LOVE this movie. It's a documentary about the famous Ballet Russes from France early in the 1940s. It's meant to be quite good if you're interested in the topic (which I can't exactly say I am), but for anyone who use they should definitely check it out.

Slither, dir. Gunn
Director James Gunn wrote the screenplay for the recent Dawn of the Dead remake, which was EXCELLENT, y'all (let's forget about him writing the two Scooby Doo movies okay!) and I have heard this is very much in the same vein as Tremors from 1990 which was super fun. But this is SUCH a DVD movie. I'll definitely hire it out on DVD but planting $10 down for this at the cinema would be a hard decision even though I'm sure I would like it.

Candy, dir. Armfield
Opening this weekend in preview screenings is Neil Armfield's first production in quite a while. It stars Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish as young lovers and cocaine adictees. Geoffrey Rush, Noni Hazlehurst, Tony Martin and Tom Budge co-star. I've heard mixed word on this film, but I'm still extremely excited to see it. The performances are apparently brilliant, so that's an encouraging sign.

It's just nice to see Australian product come out so regularly lately. Hopefully this movie can continue to strength they've had at the box-office.

Speaking of box-office, last week at the Australian cinemas it was as dire as it was in the states.

1. Mission Impossible 3 (2)
2. The Benchwarmers (1)
3. Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (6)
4. Eight Below (4)
5. Final Destination 3 (3)
6. The World's Fastest Indian (6)
7. Two For the Money (1)
8. Kokoda (4)
9. Failure to Launch (5)
10. American Dreamz (3)

Mission Impossible 3 holds a better-than-the-US 40% but opened to a much smaller % gross than it did in the states. It's running total is $7.3mil (equating to $73mil if you want an American comparison) and will probably be lucky to reach double that. The Benchwarmers doesn't duplicate it's American success over here with $765,000 ($7.65mil). You can blame that on the fact that baseball (or American Football) movies don't translate here because neither are large sports here. The only other new release in the Top 10 was Two For the Money which died due to zero promotion with $263,000 ($2.63mil).

Kokoda just misses $2.5mil ($25mil) by a fraction this week, but should reach the $3mil milestone soon enough. Speaking volumes is the fact that American Dreamz is (somehow) still making money in the form of $190,000 ($1.9mil) - enough for #10. She's the Man at #12 passes the $6mil mark making it one of the biggest hits of the year (It's only behind Ice Age 2, MI3 and Inside Man at the moment.

Outside of the Top 10 Hidden continues to perform astonishingly with $153,000 ($1.53mil) on 13 screens (Am. Dreamz is still on 123). Where the Truth Lies also had a debut with $79,000 on 12. Deepa Mehta's Water approaches $1mil in it's fifth week sitting at $847,000. Excellent stuff for a foreign-language film. The second best average after Hidden belonged to Drawing Restraint 9's $8,579 on one single screen.

Remember, in Australia films on average tend to gross one tenth of what they do in America. If in US dollars a film makes $10mil then when it's released in Australia it should make roughly $1mil in Australian dollars. Or if it makes $200mil in the US, it should make $20mil here. That takes into account population, inflation, currency conversion and all that jazz. So when She's the Man makes $6mil it equates to $60mil (it barely made $30mil in the US) which is pretty huge difference. Does that make sense? Yeah it does!