One of the earliest Europeanterritories to report end-of-year figures, Switzerland's 14% year-on-year drop and market dominance by UIPappear likely indicators of trends to be seen across the major mainlandterritories in the next few days.

While year-on-year businessmay be in line with much of Europe the real interest in Switzerland comes from how individual titles perform both intotal and in the separate regions. Switzerland's top 30 films of the year table are rarely troubledby local productions and so the measure of Hollywood imports is clear.

This year was no exceptionwith just a single smash hit local title upsetting the Hollywood whitewash. My Name Is Eugen (Mein Name Ist Eugen), a 1960s setcoming-of-age story about a 12-year-old boy and his friend during their lastsummer of adventure, sold nearly 526,000 tickets by the end of the year, whenit remained in the German region's top seven after 16 weeks on release. AGerman language production My Name Is Eugen has only released in that region of the country(Sept 15) through local distributor Frenetic.

Madagascar topped Switzerland's international chart, the animated film sold some50,000 more tickets than Harry Potteralthough the boy wizard was still in major release at year-end and shouldsurpass Madagascar eventually.

UIP's Ray Charles biopic Ray outgrossed stablemateWar Of The Worlds, thanks to a higherticket price, which saw it gross $312,980 (sfr412,478)more than the summer blockbuster despite actually selling 217 less tickets.

Notably it was the lowerranked titles that let the territory down. Madagascar and HarryPotter sold more tickets each than any 2004 title when the highestperformer was Harry Potter And ThePrisoner Of Azkaban (609,000 admissions). Although the 2004 top ten filmsall sold more then 350,000 tickets compared to seven in 2005, 2005 managed fiveover 400,000 compared to just three in 2004.

The top ten earners in 2005outperformed the previous year in both overall admissions (+0.15%) and boxoffice (+0.92%). It was the titles beyond the top 10 that could not compete.The average gross for films ranked 11-20 in 2005 was $2.3m (sfr3m) compared to$2.8m (sfr3.65m) in 2004, a 17.4% deficit. Meanwhile the average gross for a21-30 ranked title was $1.6m (sfr2.2m) in 2005, 18.7% off 2004's 21-30 average.

Top 10 films Switzerland2005

1 Madagascar (UIP) 697,375 $7.4m

2 Harry Potter'Goblet Of Fire (Warner Bros)647,322 $7.2m*

3 My Name Is Eugen (Frenetic) 525,678$5.6m*

4 Hitch (BVI) 425,015 $4.9m

5 Mr And Mrs Smith (Elite) 427,957 $4.8m

6 Star Wars: Episode III (20th Fox) 395,172 $4.45m

7 Meet The Fockers(UIP) 392,801 $4.42m

8 The Chronicles Of Narnia(BVI) 291,543 $3.2m*

9 Ray (UIP) 252,460 $3.1m

10 War Of The Worlds (UIP) 252,677 $2.8m

* Still on release atyear-end

Source: SFV/ASDF