One warrior at the box office: "Kid" became the most successful novelty of the weekend

The film starring Gleb Kalyuzhny became the only release of the week that managed to enter the top 5 of the rental, where "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" is still in the lead. For Russian cinemas, the past weekend turned out to be unsuccessful: the total attendance decreased by almost half, both compared to the previous long weekend (February 21-23) and the standard February 14-15. There are only 1.5 million tickets sold, and almost half of this volume belongs to Sarik Andreasyan's film. The rest of the releases either received a limited number of sessions or failed to attract a viewer. Izvestia analyzes the results of the first spring weekend in the cinema.

The "Fairy tale" has become a reality

The total box office of The Tale of Tsar Saltan will have already exceeded 1.7 billion rubles by the release of this material, the film is steadily moving up, and no competitors in the family sector can stop it. Over the past weekend, the release earned another 254 million rubles, and its success in the figures of the EAIS database looks so crushing, as if the whole country went to see only Sarik Andreasyan's film. "Skazka" collected 46% of the entire weekend box office, it had the highest attendance — 24 people per session.

This is even higher than that of Hollywood parallel-rental films, where there are usually fewer sessions, but each one has more viewers than any domestic film. Most likely, Russian producers are now urgently rereading Pushkin's collected works and urging screenwriters to immediately write synopses and complete adaptations in order to apply for funding from the Cinema Foundation. And in a year and a half or two, an avalanche of film adaptations of Pushkin's masterpieces may pour upon us, although earlier cinema usually approached the legacy of the classic with deserved timidity.

Sarik Andreasyan treated him quite freely and won. First with Onegin, translated into prose, and now he has finally consolidated his success with Saltana. 4 million moviegoers for a film that wasn't released during the New Year holidays — where have you seen this? For the whole of last year, only Gorynych had such a result, but Skazka is still at the box office and may well bring this number to 5 million. Almost 600,000 tickets were sold this weekend alone, and many students haven't had spring break yet.

"Beauty" finished in second place after "Fairy Tale". It's also a family movie, but it has fees of 74 million rubles, 3.5 times less than Saltan. But the cinemas expected better results, the sessions of the "Beauty" are only two times less. But the attendance speaks for itself: 15 people against, as already mentioned, 24 in Pushkin's fairy tale.

The third place was literally chewed out by the "Maid". Last weekend, the thriller finished in fourth place at the top of the Russian box office, but this time it was able to return to the top three. He has 43.3 million rubles, and not so much due to the large number of viewers, but because these are 18+ sessions that go on in the evening and cost more. Its operating time per session is higher than that of Saltan. The total cash register exceeded 1.3 billion rubles.

A draftee is small, but expensive

Last weekend, almost two dozen films were released in the cinema. But only one of them managed to break into the top five of the Russian box office. This is "Kid," a military action game starring Gleb Kalyuzhny. The story is about a Donetsk guy who volunteered for the Russian army and participated in the storming of Mariupol in 2022 to avenge his murdered father and save his mother's life.

The film could even get into the top 3, it was overtaken by "The Maid" at the last moment, but the difference between them is less than 200 thousand rubles. "The Maid" has 43.31 million, "The Kid" has 43.15 million. True, the "Kid" had significantly more sessions, but this is logical: a fresh film on a topical topic with a favorite of the female audience in the title role. Plus, Kalyuzhny received a huge portion of free advertising in 2025 when he joined the army, and this trail of publications has not yet been forgotten. The film's operating time is quite modest, 6 thousand rubles per session, but other new products are doing so much worse that there is nothing to compare. Next weekend, which is also a holiday, they will be almost replaced by new releases.

"Last weekend and the weekend before were festive — couples and companies chose going to the cinema as a way to celebrate these events," Olga Zinyakova, president of the KARO cinema chain, explains the results of the Russian box office. — We have an extended weekend ahead of us by March 8, and many potential hits will be released: the sequel to the fabulous comedy "The Frog Princess 2", the melodrama "Tenderly to Yourself", the comedy "The New Mother-in-Law" with Garik Kharlamov, the thriller with Glen Powell "The Heir" and the comedy "Tulips".

The musical and hooligan "The King and the Fool" closes the top 5. Forever" — 33.7 million rubles. To the credit of the release, it should be said that he had the same number of viewers this weekend as The Maid, it's just that tickets are cheaper, so the total figure is lower. It is clear that the multi-million audience of an online series, which is used to watching content at home, is not so easy to get to buy movie tickets, but we see that this is still happening, the film has a viewer. And it is possible that during the March holidays, interest in the release will continue, and maybe even grow over time — this has happened in the history of rental.