Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus has taken $2.7m (€1.8m) in its opening weekend in Italy, denied the top spot only by Walt Disney SMPI’s Up in its second week.

The film’s distributor, Moviemax, will now run an extra 80 prints of the film this weekend (October 30) in response to the unexpected box office rush and a Facebook group calling for more screenings. 

Imaginarium opened on October 23 on 227 screens, with a massive screen average of $11,800 (€7,937). Its nearest rival was local comedy Oggi Sposi, which took $1.4m (€941,732) on 378 screens with a screen average of $3741 (€2,516).  Other new opener Julie and Julia took $846,207 (€569,221) on 152 screens, and Bruno took $792,734 (€533,252) on 239 screens.  

“Our marketing campaign has been particularly aggressive on all targets (adults, kids, families and teenagers) and we are thrilled to see that they all responded very well. It’s refreshing to walk into a theatre and see such a diverse audience enjoying the same film,” said Moviemax’s Roberto Proia.