Blockbuster in Russian

It’s more profitable to shoot low-budget youth comedies in Russia

At a press conference dedicated to the release of the film “Heat,” its distributor Michael Schlicht (“XX Century Fox CIS/Gemini”) estimated the total potential New Year’s box office at $60 million. “Day Watch,” which launched on the first night of 2006, collected a record 32 million. And thereby convincingly reinforced the results of the 2005 distribution, when the amount of domestic cinema grosses reached almost 50%. However, in 2006, things took a turn for the worse. Despite the general feeling that Russian cinema seems to be on the rise, in 2006 its share of the box office dropped again to 30%. And most of the films conceived as blockbusters did not become blockbusters - that is, they not only did not bring new records, but simply did not recoup the costs.

The main hope of the current New Year holidays, “Wolfhound,” an ambitious project of the Tsetralpatrnership company, collected $17.1 million in ten days of distribution in Russia and Ukraine. At the same time, according to official data, about 10 million was spent on production, and on advertising and other promotion - another 9 million. Half of the proceeds are taken by cinemas, that is, 8.5 million remain for the TsPSh share, so taking into account the continuation of distribution, sales to television and abroad, and the release of discs, one can hope that in the end there will be no significant losses.

But the competitor of “Wolfhound” - the relatively low-budget ($1.7 million for production, $3.5 million for advertising) film “Heat” earned as much as 13.6 million. Which, taking into account the share of cinemas and even 10% for distributors , covers all expenses and even leaves hope for a decent profit.

And the point is not that “Heat” is better than “Wolfhound”. For me, both are worse. It is important that, having spent three times less on advertising, the authors of “Zhara” were able to better position their simple products, which were also inexpensive. Of course, “Heat” is in a sense a remake: the success of “9th Company,” whose main actors became the main attraction of the new film, contributed to the promotion of “Heat.” (Viewers who are accustomed to TV series love sequels.) Nevertheless, there is a tendency: the viewer is losing the previous rush of interest in Russian cinema, and today you can count on profit only if you rely on the target audience and at the same time save on costs.

Moreover, at first glance, the current situation was more favorable than last year. Then in December such powerful overseas competitors as “King Kong”, “Harry Potter” and “The Chronicles of Narnia” appeared on screens. They continued to be shown during the holidays, but viewers still flocked to the latest Day Watch attraction. This time, domestic films essentially had no competitors, but even the most mediocre “Night at the Museum” took away almost $9 million from them.

In 2006, the world hit was again in first place - “Pirates of the Caribbean” with 27 million. Domestic cinema cannot boast of box office receipts. And this is despite the increase in the number of halls to almost one and a half thousand and, accordingly, an increase in the number of copies - 652 for “Wolfhound” and 590 for “Heat” versus 515 for “Day Watch”. If you count the fees for a copy, and not only of “Dozor,” but also of last year’s other leader, “9th Company,” and take into account the increase in ticket prices due to the fall in the dollar, it becomes clear that viewers who decided to indulge this year In principle, I felt less inclined to go to see a Russian film.

Russian cinema has ceased to be a novelty, but has failed to become a necessity. It is clear that it is impossible to calculate everything, that mistakes or, conversely, unexpected successes are the beauty of the film business, but there is one pattern. There are more halls, but the number of spectators does not increase.

Why would it increase? Strangely, all the advertising budgets in cinema are spent on television commercials, posters and posters. Cinema is not promoted as art by anyone or anywhere, and as entertainment it has too many competitors. This year, the second "Boomer" collected 14 million, "Bastards" - about 11 million, "Piter FM" - 8 million, "Piranha Hunt" - about 7 million. And these are the Russian box office leaders. And again, note, if we take into account costs, then the highest grossing will be Oksana Bychkova’s modest debut “Peter FM” - a low-budget youth lyrical comedy.

If we take films of a different quality, those that compete for awards, participation in festivals, that is, the so-called arthouse, then everything is very bad. The record is held by “Live”, which, in my opinion, can rather be classified as a genre film - it collected $3.8 million. Lungin’s “Island”, beloved by the intelligentsia, became super popular in its class, scored as much as $2 million Although the film is simple, understandable, without any tricks. And “Euphoria”, “Playing the Victim”, “Free Swimming” - those are generally beyond calculations.

In general, we can conclude that the Russian public is not interested in cinema. Television tells her everyday stories, and her love for the once most popular of arts has hopelessly cooled, and it is no longer possible to revive it with any budget. It is still possible to gather the population for one-time events, but only teenagers have become a habit of going to cinemas. Only they need cheap and fast dishes that are similar to each other, like hamburgers at McDonald's. Anything more complex or expensive is doomed.

The state, while increasing its support for production and promotion, does not care at all about shaping the audience’s need for cinema. TV shows about movies have such low ratings that they are sent to the most inconvenient hours of the night. In glossy magazines and mass publications, the theme of cinema is based on interest in the personal lives of artists. And films exploit existing reputations of actors and directors, but do not create new ones. The times of nationwide popularity of “Brother” have sunk into the past; now it is almost impossible to imagine even a semblance of the cultural swarming that accompanied “Assa” or “Little Vera”. And there is no longer any space in which one could sort out one’s impressions even of a movie that has already been made.

And this is a much more serious problem than the success or failure of the next Russian blockbuster.

Alena Solntseva