Solo Film's Jester Till (Till Eulenspiegel) comfortably exceeded the 100,000 admissions barrier to take $600,187 for 118,687 tickets from 507 prints.

The large-scale release of the Euros 15m animation feature by Eberhard Junkersdorf's Munich Animation studio is seen by some observers as something of a turning point for Solo-Film who previously hadn't released any film on more than 200 prints.

When he picked up Jester Till earlier this year, Solo's managing director Peter Heinzemann pointed out that 'in the last two years, [German] domestic family entertainment productions have shown they have good sales chances. Till Eulenspiegel will far exceed the previous admission figures in this genre.'

Whether this release will top one of the recent local animation hits - Cartoon Film/Warner Bros. The Little Polar Bear which attracted over 2.7m cinemagoers. - remains to be seen. After all, Disney is just around the corner with Finding Nemo which opens in Germany on Nov 20.

Meanwhile, Johnny Depp reigns supreme at the top of the German box office top 10: his Pirates film holds onto pole position for the fourth week running, despite a 25% slip in admissions, and he snatched the No. 2 slot with the new release of Robert Rodriguez's Once Upon A Time in Mexico which had the weekend's highest screen average ($3,384).

At the same time, Columbia TriStar's Seabiscuit opened rather disappointingly at No. 7 with only $439,265 from 310 screens, while