Even before it scooped three top prizes at the Golden Globe awards last Sunday, Sam Mendes' American Beauty benefited from favourable word-of-mouth in Germany to rack up an impressive screen average of $16,720 over the four-day weekend (January 20-23). The film, which distributor UIP is now sure to widen following its Globes success, was released on 44 prints.

Meanwhile, Bernd Eichinger's Constantin Film held on to the two top positions at the German box over the weekend with American Pie and The Sixth Sense which between them, occupy almost a third of all of German cinema screens - nearly 50% of the box office.

Comedy American Pie, which was seen by 847,387 cinema-goers in the first four days after its release on Jan 6 and increased attendance to more than 900,000 on the second weekend, saw ticket sales and box-office slip only 11% in the third weekend from 785 prints. Admissions have now topped the 3 million mark and brought in more than DM35m ($18m) in box office revenue.

The Sixth Sense, which has already reached 2,854,238 admissions, is likely to pass the 3 million hurdle next week. Meanwhile, Senator Film's heavily marketed Christmas blockbuster Kapt'n Blaubar only scraped by the million barrier after six weeks on release - a disappointing result for a film which was expected to be the distributor's most successful movie to date.