Some news. Russian trailer for the Dark Knight had the worst dub I've heard in YEARS. It was not just terribly bad - it was Offensive. It had such a devastating reception over Russian Internet, that CEO of the distributing company CARO personally explained that they didn't have enough time to dub the trailer properly (kind of quick and dirty), and promised that the movie will have one of the best dubs in Europe. They had a big casting for the voice of Joker, sent auditions to Warner and apparently had Nolan's approval.

In terms of B/O - 2 companies already crossed the $100 million benchmark - 20th Century Fox and UPI. Caro is gonna join them very soon. And by the end of the year we'll see BV/Sony becoming the 4th $100 million distributor. In 2007 there were NO $100 million distributors - UPI pulled $95.6 m only.
Central Partnership, on the other hand, is gonna face a substantial drop from last year, since it focuses primarily on the local and non-US pictures, and we haven't seen many of them making big bucks this year.

You can drop some countries from that poll (Australia, Spain, Italy, South Korea, France) as they don't have enough population to push them ever to number one. China and Russia, if ticket prices rise, are most likely to gain the top positions over Japan, UK and Germany, although I don't know if as soon as 2012.

In regards to dubbing in Russia I have one question. I have seen downloaded films where there is no dubbing for each character per se, but what seems to be a narrator (sngle person) that talks over each character, no matter if male or female.
I don't know if it was Russian what he spoke, although it sounded so to me, but it could have been Czech, Hungarian, etc.
Is the dubbing done that way in Russia or is the dubbing done normal with a dubber for each character in the movie?
If it's the first way, that would really ruin the movie experience for me.

Back in the 1980's, when the VCR's first came out in USSR, they were illegal. There was obviously no legal distribution method for tapes, so American movies were dubbed by several incognito guys (most famous of them was Leonid Volodarskiy). As a result, every character in every movie was dubbed with the same voice. Nowadays, this is not practiced a lot, although it's still spotted in pirated copies which are released prior to the official DVD-release (screeners and such).

Also, this practice is parodied by "Goblin", who creates humorous translations for Hollywood blockbusters and dubs them with a nasal voice similar to Volodarsky's.

Apparently these dubs are called "Gavrilov translations" - you can read more about them on Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilov_translation

Screeners filmed in the local theaters will have a normal dub.

Many pirated films in the net or illegal DVDs can have a single dub or a dub of few voices if they were stolen in some other country. There's also DVDRips, which are essentially copies of legal DVDs leaked to the net, so they have normal dubs, if stolen from the local release. Official dubs have voices for most of the characters. If the voice of the character is special, like in case of Gollum or Joker, they will try to do their best to match it, and ask for the studio's approval. Occasionally they even ask local celebrities to dub the movie - this often happens with animated films.

I think that's not correct to say that he creates humorous translations for Hollywood blockbusters, if that's only 10% of his work.

Goblin also dubbed many movies that can lose some important things during the official translations (namely, hard obscenities used in original English version will be changed for mild things that sound soft, while Goblin's dub have full translation as it is - Snatch, Pulp Fiction, Full Metal Jacket and such). He is mainly an Internet phenomenon, since most of his translations are not official, but several times he made official dubs - like South Park, Team America, Sopranos, King of the Hill, Robot chicken and his dub adds a lot of value for a movie in the eyes of people who are familiar with his work (and that's more than 70 titles). Some of his dubs were officially released on DVD - Reservour dogs, Chronicles of Riddick, Boondock Saints. "Goblin's translation" is an important brand name and guarantees that sales will be higher than with standard dub - and that's one voice Vs many.

"X-Files" debuted expectedly big, generating $2.4 m. I tend to think that the actual numbers would improve since it might not include Ukraine.

Rump, how big is the show there?

It was HUGE back then, one of the most popular foreign TV shows ever - it had prime-time on the main TV Channel for a long time. But the last seasons were not very popular - and were dumped to a secondary channel. But still, it's a cult hit with a big fan base. Especially considering that the entire show is available in the Net.

So, yeah, X-files was underestimated and didn't include Ukraine.

Hancock is holding very well, and has a chance to surpass Wanted since it's doing much better in Ukraine.
Hellboy 2 is looking to finish 7 times higher than the original. Both Meet Dave and Get Smart are very solid and will likely finish with $3.6 and $3.1 respectively.

This weekend is gonna be very big since the only new blockbuster will be Mummy 3, sequel to the 2001 box-office champion, which made $3.05 back then. If things go according to plan, we may potentially see it grossing about $8 million in 4 days, or as much as $10-11 m. After Hancock scored that big, and Hellboy 2 jumped so high, I believe we might see some really big bucks from this one.

If China opens up it'll be a leading market though chances are it won't.
What about India? They'll be the most populous nation soon, though, never heard of anything doing big there. Indian films are also incredibly long and filled with singing and dancing, or that's what my stereotype of them is and so have no audience outside itself.
I wonder if there's a need for that kind of film, I mean this may come of as ignorant but who would really be pleased with the same kind of film coming out again and again and again. From what I know every genre is done with singing and dancing. Maybe it's changed, I don't know.

I don't think India will challenge the overseas top stop - it's gonna be most populated, but poverty is very high. Same with China - and it's market is too restricted (I mean, 48 non-local releases last year???), although rising like crazy. Government always gives priority to local releases and censors outsiders too much. Plus piracy is always big. I think it has potential of being the top market by numbers, but not by priority. Even if Russia might be close 2nd, it still would be considered of higher priority since it's a free and unrestricted market opened for all Hollywood releases. I mean, it's cool that China might give you some big bucks, but you would have to tear your ass apart and cut your movie to break into it, which means costs, efforts and time, and final profit wouldn't be that high. Who cares how big is the market if it's almost mandatory that Hollywood gets 1/3 of it with 2/3 going to locals? Say it might be worth $3 billion by certain year, but if Hollywood has only $1 billion, do you really care that it's the biggest country by numbers?

P.S. Well, I've seen quite many Indian films back then, and they were all with singing and dancing. They were uber-popular in the USSR and are still popular here. And they are popular in many other countries as well. It's not like they are all the same.

Nowadays bollywood movies have less dance and singing in the actual movie. Only romantic musicals have more of that. A lot of films actually have a special song (usually the best in the movie) that are constantly being promoted but the song always ends up either on opening credits or end credits. I think nowadays maximum number of songs/dancing is like 4. A lot of comedy films actually have only 2-3 and some don't even have any.

Final number for X-Files is $2.7 m.

The b/o champion franchise The Mummy returns with the record numbers, showing that in these 7 years its market value only increased. I've seen the 3rd movie being a sure breakthrough hit, but it actually improved even on my best-case prediction. $12.7 million opening would make it THE HIGHEST non-local opener of 2008. It is likely that the final number will go up if it was underestimated (which is the case most of the time) or didn't include Ukraine (which is the case fairly often). And it might actually knock down Shrek 3 from the 3rd position in all-time best openings list. I guess this is also the Highest improvement ever for a sequel over the original's total, since the original opened such a long time ago, and probably the highest improvement for a second sequel over the first sequel's total as well.

Here's how the updated list of The Biggest Opening Weekends of all-time in CIS would look like now:

1. The Very Best Film $17.82
2. Pirates: AWE $15.62
3-4. Shrek 3 $13.19
3-4. The Mummy 3 $12.7 + Ukraine if not already included (will update in a few days)
5. Hancock $12.7
6. Wanted $11.35
7. Pirates: DMC $10.3
8. Irony of Fate 2 $10.25
9. Indiane Jones 4 $9.11
10. Kung Fu Panda $9.06

This means that we got 7 out of 10 highest openers of all-time in the last 7 months!

And yet again I have a feeling that TDK will open with a very solid improvement over BB's total. I think we can expect around $4-6 million at this point, even though the marketing is almost non-existent. If BB wasn't such a big flop, I would expect around $9-10 million. There's a very big number of frequent moviegoers who need a blockbuster every weekend, which drives the openings so high. I think the new Batman movie can perfectly satisfy this need.

That's crazy! Did you expect it to do this well in Russia???

Holy mother of fuck

"This weekend is gonna be very big since the only new blockbuster will be Mummy 3, sequel to the 2001 box-office champion, which made $3.05 back then. If things go according to plan, we may potentially see it grossing about $8 million in 4 days, or as much as $10-11 m." - as you can see, I didn't... I raised my prediction after seeing the recent streak of $9-11 million openers. "Crazy" is the right word for the Russian market - it almost never meets the highest prediction, but always makes much higher that that. When your highest expectation turns out to be underestimation 90% of the time, crazy is the right term. You see this trend every time, you tend to raise your predictions even higher, but in the end you are still underestimating most of the time. Crazy. I'd say even the upside predictions can't keep pace with the reality.

You crazy Russkies.

All current numbers and estimates do not include Ukraine. It's funny enough also how our Ukrainian authorities are bragging about 4% increase over last year and trying to convince anyone that Ukrainian dubbing did no harm while in Russia box office grosses increased by more than 30%

All my numbers include Ukraine. There's still a lot of mess because of this split, and often Variety and others mistake the numbers - sometimes it's with Ukraine, sometimes it's without. I didn't like it when they started reporting numbers separately, but now I think it is good, because Ukraine's numbers, if included, will drive our growth rates down, so it is good to exclude them.

4% is nothing - that's well under the inflation rate (which is how much, 15-20%?), so admissions must have decreased substantially. Within the next few weeks we are going to surpass 2007 yearly total already. I'm sure we will finish the year with 50% growth. Compared to Russian market, Ukraine's box-office is completely dead.

Plus, we must not forget that reported yearly numbers include December of the last year, when the law didn't come into action yet, so here's their 4% of growth right there. Dead market.

I wish we had 10% growth in Poland each year but we have a rollercoaster ride every year. One year it's 33m adm, next is 25, then we have 34m adm.

How do you explain this? Political or economical instability, or something? We started growing with the overall country economic activity.

I think there are few things:

- piracy
- high ticket prices
- lack of marketing
- no cinemas in smaller cities

I think we have pretty much the same things here (only marketing is kind of improving). Piracy is always huge. Prices are rising like crazy. Cinemas are in shortage (the country is too big...).

Final number in Russia should be available in a few hours, but at this point it is already known that it posted the 3rd best opening of all time, not the 4th as it appeared according to estimates. If WOM is OK, it should have enough traction to knock down Hancock as the top Hollywood title of the year (to date), since it will not have as much competition for screens and audience as Hancock had. And there's some chance that it will challenge The Very Best Film's $30 million as the highest grossing movie of the year (to date).