Every silver lining

What a lovely weekend that was.  Spring arrived in a major way, a couple of days before its official start date.  The sun shone, the birds sang and the cherry blossomed.  All of which was seriously irritating if you had a new movie opening.

Chalet Girl opened last weekend and became that week’s highest new entry.  Yay.  But overall admissions were considerably down on the previous weekend, due in large part to the ‘if it’s sunny people tend to want to be outside mowing the lawn rather than sweating in a dark cinema’ principle.  Suddenly, as the line from the movie goes, not so yay.

4^th is great, behind three fairly chunky, wide-release studio movies.  Highest new entry is also great – have some of that McConaughey.  A million bucks sounds big and the screen average was respectable.  But, however you spin it, the numbers weren’t what we might have hoped for.  Of the 400,000 buttocks we were hoping to entice into our lovely padded seats, we maybe only got half that number.

It’s all relative and, relative to others, we did fine.  And in hindsight, opening a ski season movie as the daffodils are blooming and the short sleeves are appearing, was a little risky.  But there are a thousand and one reasons why we chose that date (I outlined some of those on an earlier post that I was then asked to take down, because it exposed a bit too much of the sausage-making process for some people’s liking).  And what’s done is done.

The good news is threefold.  Firstly, we got off to a start, and we can build from that.  Secondly, we have ‘held onto our screens’ for next weekend.  With not much looming in the way of big releases this Friday (Momentum’s ‘Limitless’, as well as ‘The Eagle’ and something about turtles) the cinema owners clearly think that Chalet Girl still has some legs, and some audience to find.  So we still have a certain amount of ‘penetration’, as the distribution lingo has it.

Thirdly, and most importantly, people are loving our movie.  Search for “Chalet Girl” on Twitter, as I have been doing a lot of late, and you will read some incredibly encouraging and lovely responses from people have been to see the movie.  They group into the ‘Ed Westwick is fit’ category, the ‘better than I expected’ category and, of course, the ‘I thought it was a pile of sh1t’ category, on a ratio of about 60:30:10.  Which isn’t bad, I reckon.

So now we need to bow down and make a votive offering at the altar of WOM.  That’s Word of Mouth, to the uninitiated.  Our fate is now largely out of our hands.  Yes, we can keep banging the drum, working the PR, running the ads.  But either people are going to tell their mates that Chalet Girl rocks and they should go and see it, or they aren’t.  If they do, we could rumble on for a few more weeks.  If they don’t, we might be out of cinemas before school holidays kick in.  Which would be a shame.

So tell your mates.  And pray to WOM.  And pray for rain.

Right, I’m off to mow the lawn.

 

Box Office figures from Screen International:

 

UK/IRELAND

Three-day weekend March 18-20, 2011

 

Rank	Film/Origin/Distributor	Week	3-day gross £	3-day gross $	Sites	Site avg $	3-day change	Total gross $ to  20 Mar 2011
1(2)	Rango (US) Paramount Pictures International	3	1,045,326	1,698,060	470	3,613	-32	8,155,856
2(1)	Battle: Los Angeles (US) Sony Pictures Releasing International	2	874,265	1,420,184	417	3,406	-51	5,611,355
3(3)	Unknown (UK, Ger, Fr, Can, Jap, US) Optimum Releasing	3	775,576	1,259,870	367	3,433	-25	7,304,250
4(-)	Chalet Girl (UK, Ger, Aust) Paramount Pictures International	NEW	677,716	1,100,903	381	2,890	-	1,100,903
5(-)	The Lincoln Lawyer (US) Entertainment Film Distributors	NEW	571,836	928,908	378	2,457	-	928,908
6(5)	Hall Pass (US) Warner Bros	2	556,292	903,658	395	2,288	-38	3,238,601
7(-)	Anuvahood (UK) Revolver	NEW	536,818	872,024	149	5,853	-	872,024
8(4)	The Adjustment Bureau (US) Universal Pictures International	3	532,325	864,725	390	2,217	-42	6,653,741
9(6)	The King's Speech (UK, Aus) Momentum Pictures	11	350,417	569,228	407	1,399	-49	71,494,168
10(8)	Gnomeo & Juliet (UK, US) Entertainment One (eOne) Films International	6	295,023	479,245	455	1,053	-47	24,572,963
11(7)	Paul (Sp, Fr, US, UK) Universal Pictures International	5	289,621	470,469	296	1,589	-48	22,382,044
12(-)	Submarine (UK, US) Optimum Releasing	NEW	244,476	397,135	60	6,619	-	397,135
13(10)	West Is West (UK) Icon Film Distribution	4	138,422	224,857	102	2,204	-44	3,847,378
14(11)	Yogi Bear (US, NZ) Warner Bros	6	113,301	184,050	326	565	-51	14,011,784
15(-)	You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (US, Sp) Warner Bros	NEW	112,168	182,209	101	1,804	-	182,209
16(14)	Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son (US) 20th Century Fox	5	112,025	181,977	201	905	-43	8,242,609
17(12)	Tangled (US) Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International	8	97,906	159,042	285	558	-56	32,637,242
18(9)	Fair Game (US, ) Entertainment One (eOne) Films International	2	93,128	151,280	152	995	-69	949,834
19(13)	True Grit (US) Paramount Pictures International	6	84,560	137,362	137	1,003	-60	13,256,821
20(15)	I Am Number Four (US) Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International	4	64,721	105,135	119	883	-60	4,997,235