Thursday, August 23, 2012

Bring on the Box Office

Or Why We Do What We Do.

Tonight, our first film Zambezia goes out on 800 screens across 150 cities in Russia. This is both petrifying and exhilarating at the same time. Hundreds of thousands of people will see the film and it’s a fantastic achievement for the team at Triggerfish who fought knee deep in the salt marsh heaving a cutlass (apologies to T.S. Eliot).

Our Russian distributor had originally planned to go out on 250 screens, but after a super successful test screening in Moscow they decided to lift the number to 800 screens with another 100 screens on standby. District 9 went out on 453 screens in Russia, so this makes Zambezia the most widely distributed African film in that territory.

Our film is entering its 7th week in Israel where more than 60,000 people have been to see it. We are the leading independent film in the territory and we are beating Aardman/ Sony’s The Pirates! Band of Misfits and have done 1/3 the Box Office of Disney/ Pixar’s Brave on considerably less screens and on a fraction of their budgets – this is a phenomenal achievement for a little studio in Cape Town.

It’s hard to extrapolate data on how the film will perform in other territories, but the mood is good among distributors and we are excited about the future. By its nature, the film industry has an outsize influence on the world. We hope that our film will help recast the perception people have about Africa. We want to tell a different story.

This is why we do what we do. For the love of it.
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1 comment:

Unknown said...

AMAZING! Huge well done to everyone at Triggerfish, from the big fish to the little fish! - Storme