March 2002 - Nr. 3
German Movie Theatres Enjoy Box Office Boom
TWIG - Film executives will have one thing to celebrate at the 2002 Berlinale: Germans have been going to the movies in droves. Movie theatres in the Federal Republic attracted 16.7% more visitors in 2001 than the year before, for a total of 178 million patrons, the Berlin Association for the Advancement of Film (Filmfoerderungsanstalt, FFA) announced Tuesday (February 5).
The first year of the new millennium also gave a boost to films produced in Germany. More people went to see German movies in 2001 than any year since 1986, when the FFA first began tracking box office sales. German films snagged 18.4% of the domestic market last year, up from 12.5% in 2000. Analysts say the trend can be traced in part to Der Schuh des Manitu (The Shoe of Manitu), a spoof on the Karl May-based German westerns of the 1960s that attracted 11 million viewers.
German box office sales for all movies hit almost 1 billion euros (US$ 860 million), outstripping last year’s sales by 20%. The sales increase was more pronounced in western Germany (20.3%) than in the eastern Laender (16.7%). At the end of 2001, movie tickets cost an average of 5.55 euros (US$4.78) at Germany’s 4,792 movie theatres.
