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Saturday
28Nov2009

Box Office - '2012' Sets New Record in Russia

DateSaturday, November 28, 2009 at 4:02AM
Only because it's been an eyebrow-raising international run, we've followed the progress of 2012 in the foreign markets for the past couple of weeks. At first it was impressive that the film made over $200 million worldwide in its debut weekend, thereby canceling out its production cost, and then the next weekend, the total gross doubled, meaning the film was very near the break-even point, including marketing and those other costs.

Yesterday, Variety provided yet another update: 2012 just set a record in Russia for a foreign feature film, hitting $30 million there in just two weeks. That's more impressive when you look at the per-screen averages, which are about $36,000, because the film was only on 840 screens. The last movie to make $30 million in Russia was the homegrown Day Watch.

But for a movie to set a record like that in only two weeks tells you something else about Sony's very specific global push for this movie, and that something is that other studios are likely to follow this model as soon and as often as they can. Before long, the movie will be approaching $600 million around the world without really slowing down, only needing the usually important American market for about 20% of that total, if not less than that.

Such disparities aren't new; Mamma Mia! did less than 25% of its business in the US, and earlier this year, Ice Age 3 became the third-highest-grossing film ever in terms of foreign box office, with 22.4% of its money being generated here at home. Sony experienced a similar weighting with Angels & Demons, and it will be more pronounced here, as 2012 skyrockets into the top 50 films in total box office in probably another week to ten days.

AuthorColin Boyd | | in , , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | CommentPost a Comment |

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