Yaga Berry again: the fairy tale about the forest witch topped the box office box office chart

"Baba Yaga Saves the New Year" earned 161 million rubles in its first weekend and took first place in the top of the national box office. Russian cinemas gave the film almost a quarter of all screenings. For the first time in three weeks, "Paddington 3" ended the weekend not in first place, its fees in comparison with the last weekend fell by almost half. But its total box office exceeded half a billion rubles. In the format of previews triumphantly passed "Spruce 11", demonstrating the highest workload per session.

Ded Moroz and Baba Yaga - against the Snow Queen

Last year Baba Yaga saved the world, this time - just New Year's Eve. But that was enough for the audience. In its first weekend, the fairy tale received maximum confidence from cinemas: the release was given about a quarter of all sessions in the country. And Yaga did not fail, earned 161 million rubles, took a confident first place in the Russian box office. And not as usual, but with quite a decent attendance - 22 people per session. This is all the more important, because competing "Baba Yaga" with a large number of other family content, which also claims to large fees and ready to fight for this segment of the audience by any means.

The plot is quite conventional: Santa Claus and Baba Yaga join forces to defeat the Snow Queen, and help them as fairy-tale heroes, and quite modern people, primarily the parents of the boy Yura, who was kidnapped by the queen and dragged away to her castle.

- The film has shown a good start, improving the result of the launch of the first part almost twice - says in conversation with "Izvestia" president of the network of cinemas "KARO" Olga Zinyakova. - This adventure movie confirms the stable interest of the audience not only to fairy tale stories, but also to the franchise itself. The picture can get to the mark of half a billion. But, given the saturation of New Year's rental similar holiday and fairy tale stories, "Baba Yaga" will not be easy.

"The Adventures of Paddington 3" has slowed down a lot. His first weekend he finished at a mark of 244 million rubles. At the end of the third weekend, he earned only 70 million, being in second place of the top. And this is the very case when it had no direct competitors, because against the background of Russian releases it still stands out quite strongly, and there were no more Hollywood family releases. Moreover, it also has a much lower attendance than "Yaga" - 16 people, although the earnings per session do not differ that much. On the other hand, the marketing resources of "Paddington" in Russia are not so large, and the result of the movie is still noticed by the market.

- British bear Paddington already by the third weekend has mastered half a billion rubles, which is 1.5 times more than the previous parts managed to earn - recalls Olga Zinyakova. - Now the main interest of the public will shift towards New Year's stories, and Paddington will have to fight for the box office. However, he will not leave the top ten by the end of the year.

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Three Cats - a new full-length animated film

The third place at the box office went to the rush "Three Cats. Winter Adventures." This cute Christmas special, just over an hour long, was just a little bit behind "Paddington", it had 69 million and could have finished the weekend with "silver". Perhaps it just didn't have enough afternoon sessions and went to the cheaper morning ones, because it just had significantly more viewers than "Paddington": the bear had 171,000, while "Cats" had 217,000. And "Cats" has more sessions. But this content is addressed to a younger audience, while "Paddington" was attended by teenagers and kidlets, who are not so interested in popular drawn domestic animation. Maybe for nothing, because "Three Cats" among millions of computer-generated series look lammy and original even after all these years.

"Stars in Siberia" is really a stellar cast: Dmitry Malikov, Klava Koka, Sergei Svetlakov, Olga Buzova. With such names, the plot might not even be there, but it is there and is built around a New Year's Eve corporate party, where the classic pre-holiday confusion unfolds. The movie easily collected 42 million rubles, finished its second weekend in fourth place with not a very big drop in relation to the first.

The attention of the audience from some stars smoothly moved to others. Preview-sessions of the new "Christmas Trees" showed not just high interest - the release has the highest earnings per session among all the films of the weekend, 14 thousand rubles. At the sessions were 26 spectators, and the total box office was 27 million. Recall that this is not a full-fledged release in the rental, but only a preview, so the sessions were not very many - less than 2 thousand in selected cinemas. And the money "Firs" at the same time earned more than three times the sessions of another comedy - "Totally dumbfounded", which ended up in sixth place.

- The pre-sales of the 11th part of "Spruce Trees" speak about the great confidence of the audience in this franchise, - says Olga Zinyakova. - The story for 11 years has not ceased to attract viewers to the movies on New Year's holidays. A familiar concept will help the novelty to withstand competition with other bright New Year's projects.

This week, "Christmas Trees" will begin full rental, and family content in Russia will become even tighter - will be released "Domovenok Kuzya", which will pull away from the top releases of another part of the audience. But all these pictures have just a little time before the New Year's battle, when the vacations will fight each other "Finist" and "The Wizard of Emerald City". "Izvestia" will follow the successes of all participants in this process.