Until recently, family-films and especially those based on children's books, seemed a sure-fire success for Dutch cinemas.

However, the disappointing opening results of the Belgian-Dutch coproduction Suske And Wiske: The Dark Diamond, with a meagre screen-average of Euros 465 came as a nasty surprise for distributor Independent Films.

The company expected the source material, a popular Belgian comic book series that has run since 1945 with 282 episodes to date, would attract a wide audience, since generations of readers in the Netherlands and Belgium grew up on the adventures of the Flemish brother and sister Suske and Wiske.

But it may not herald the end of the genre - bad reviews and hefty competition (Brother Bear, Spy Kids 3D, Peter Pan) are likely to have done most of the damage.