All Screen articles in 24 December 2003
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Twin Sisters producer readies five strong slate
Successful Dutch production house IdtV Film, the company behind local box office smash and Oscar hope Twin Sisters, has lined up a slate of five new features. Two of the projects from the Amsterdam based company are international productions. Batavia is billed as an epic about the disastrous seavoyage of ...
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Romania set to privatise state-owned cinemas
Romania is expected this week to unveil details of the privatisation of a significant number of state-owned cinemas.The move was revealed by Decebal Mitulescu, director general of the National Centre of Cinematography (CNC), the state-body which has regulatory, funding and administrative functions similar to the French organisation with the same ...
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Berdugo named head of French film exporters
Raphael Berdugo, head of Roissy Films, was last week unanimously elected president of the executive board of ADEF, the association of independent French film exporters. Berdugo has a mandate for two years and heads a committee that also includes Daniela Elstner of Les Films du Losange, Nicolas Brigaud-Robert of Films ...
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Screen International's Review of the Year 2003
2003 was the year that Old Europe, to steal from Donald Rumsfeld's war cry, took a reality check in preparation for the New. Local film support apparatuses were re-engineered, national boundaries questioned and distribution-led cinema more fully embraced. Vivendi finally surrendered Universal and with it Europe's ill-advised claim to studio ...
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SWEDEN
As elsewhere The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King flattened all competition and set box-office records at the Swedish box-office, but the other new US release family comedy Freaky Friday fared well despite the mammoth competition.Though its 63 prints only allowed for a fourth position on the ...
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NEW ZEALAND
New Zealanders' overwhelming sense of pride in and ownership of The Lord Of The Rings trilogy was good news for the opening of the final instalment, The Return Of The King, which did an extraordinary NZ$2.6m last weekend.To put this in perspective, it accounted for more than 75% of the ...
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HONG KONG
Media Asia's Infernal Affairs III kicked off the Christmas box office season with a stellar US$2.14m in its first six days. The film grossed HK$3.22m on its opening day (Dec 12), smashing several records including the biggest non-weekend opening of the year.The highly-anticipated conclusion to Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's ...
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DENMARK
At the Danish box-office it wasn't just the predictable third instalment of The Lord Of The Rings, The Return Of The King, which enjoyed record-breaking success, with the re-releases of the two first films also finding places in the chart.However, their screen averages were not too impressive as was the ...
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AUSTRALIA
UIP's Peter Pan was the most popular film in its opening weekend at the Australian box office, although its gross was a slightly underwhelming A$1,507,592 from 269 screens. This result was surprising given the extra publicity generated by it being shot in Australia by Australian expatriate director P J Hogan. ...
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Celestial Movies secures Hong Kong pay-TV slot
Hong Kong-based Celestial Pictures has secured carriage for its 24-hour Chinese movie channel, Celestial Movies, on Hong Kong's newest pay-TV service, exTV, which launches on Feb 18 next year.The channel, which features content from the Shaw Brothers library, Golden Harvest and several other Asian film studios, has already been launched ...
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BVI Ireland celebrates record breaking year
Buena Vista Ireland has set a number of Irish distribution records in 2003 to become the number one Irish distributor for the first time in its ten years in business.The top slot has been achieved with a combination of strongly performing titles from the Disney and Miramax stables together with ...
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Italian gov't prepares to unveil Venice board overhaul
Italian culture minister Giuliano Urbani has announced that he will name the Venice Biennale's new board of directors and president before January 6th - although it now looks increasingly unlikely that either Biennale president Franco Bernabe' or artistic director Moritz de Hadeln will be reappointed to helm the next Venice ...
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Berlinale launches new niche competitions
Two new competitions - the Volkswagen Score Competition and the "Dialogue en Perspective" Prize - are being launched at the forthcoming Berlinale (5-15 February, 2004).In the Volkswagen Score Competition, a jury will select the most outstanding contribution to the Berlinale Talent Campus' "The Sound and Music" section and the prize-winner ...
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Mexican box office slumps in 2003
Mexico's national film institute Imcine and Chamber of Commerce Canacine are nit picking over details but the final assessment of the country's film industry in 2003 remains dire. Canacine has concluded that Mexican cinema captured a 4.5% share of the overall market but Imcine has given a rosier figure of ...
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Saccani rejoins Universal as vice president of production.
Former Universal Pictures' director of development Damien Saccani isrejoining the studio as vice president of production."Damien showed a good deal of promise when he was hereyears ago, and since then he has become a first-rate executive with keenintelligence and taste, a terrific knowledge of the business and fantasticrelationships with talent," ...
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Last Samurai holds up strongly in Japan
Warner Bros The Last Samurai raised its running total in Japan to an estimated $29.1m(Yen 3.2bn) following an impressive $4.6m (Yen 506m) third weekend haul that sawa drop of less than 1%.According to the distributor, the weekend result is 103% of theamount taken by both The Fellowship Of The Ring ...
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Fox scores with Return Of The King in Taiwain
Capitalising on a shrewd territorial pick-up, Fox International released The Lord Of TheRings: The Return Of The King in Taiwan on 218 screens at the weekend for a record $3.6mindustry opening there.Elsewhere for Fox International, Master And Commander grossed $3.6m from 2,294 screens in 37 territoriesto raise its international running ...
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Equinoxe makes Passion play
Montreal-based Equinoxe Films has picked up Canadian rightsin all media to Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ. Produced by Gibson's Icon Productions, the film is scheduledfor a release coincidental with Newmarket Films' wide US release on Feb. 25,2004 - Ash Wednesday according to the Christian calendar. The film, which ...