Fabulously done: "The Frog Princess 2" defeated Sarik Andreasyan

The new leader of the Russian rental "The Frog Princess 2" started with 203 million rubles and shifted "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" from the first line. The painting, which had been at the top for four weeks, dropped to second place with a result of 190 million rubles. Other hits of the weekend include the comedy almanac "Tulips". Despite the bright novelties, cinema attendance during the March holidays fell by half a million viewers compared to the February weekend. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.

Did Sarik Andreasyan really lose?

"The Frog Princess 2" did what no one had been able to do for four weeks in a row: it snatched the championship from "The Tale of Tsar Saltan". It wasn't easy. Moreover, in a sense, it can be considered a Pyrrhic victory. It is enough to analyze the figures published in the open database of the Unified Automated Information System (UAIS) of the Cinema Foundation to make sure of this.

The gap between the collections of the two films is insignificant, less than 10%. The Frog Princess 2 has 203 million rubles, and The Tale of Tsar Saltan has 190 million rubles. But this is the premiere weekend for Tsarevna, and Sarik Andreasyan's film is already in its fourth month at the box office. Against this background, victory does not seem like a rout, rather the opposite. Moreover, the cinemas were just really hoping for the great success of "Tsarevna", they gave her almost twice as many sessions this weekend as "Fairy Tale". But in the end, each session of the latter collected 13 thousand rubles on average, and the "Princess" did not even reach 8 thousand. Actually, in the average attendance of one show, the ratio is about the same: 29 viewers for the film adaptation of Pushkin's "Fairy Tale", 18 for "Tsarevna".

It turns out that the first place in the top of the Russian box office at Tsarevna is purely symbolic. According to the main indicators, she lost, and quite seriously. In this sense, it's interesting to see what happens next weekend. There are two scenarios here. Or a positive "sundress" will turn on, and then people will catch up. Or cinemas will urgently start putting on another movie to rectify the situation. After all, the low fees of Tsarevna are a blow to the entire rental. 2.8 million tickets were sold during the February long weekend, and now only 2.3 million. And in mid-February, on the most ordinary weekend, "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" earned 671 million rubles at the start, more than three times more than "Tsarevna" now.

"Cinema attendance during these February holidays was significantly higher than during the same period in 2025, and the same can be said about the March holidays," says Olga Zinyakova, president of the KARO cinema chain. — In February, "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" played the role of a cash register generator. During the month of rental, fees began to decrease, and over the March holiday weekend there were no projects of comparable scale that could single-handedly attract a huge audience to cinemas and show equally impressive results. There was a high bid for the sequel to The Frog Princess, but even here Sarik Andreasyan's project took away part of the box office.

As for "The Tale of Tsar Saltan," the release is doing phenomenally well. It has already been said about the high attendance this weekend, but it is worth adding that it is the best among all the screenings, not counting the parallel Hollywood sessions. Now the film has collections of more than 1.9 billion rubles, which means that in the coming days it will overcome the threshold of 2 billion and move on, albeit not as confidently as in its first month.

The first quarter of the year is coming to an end, and already in the overall top 5 of the Russian box office, two releases have been shot by Sarik Andreasyan - "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" and "Prostokvashino", the latter released during the New Year holidays and earned 2.4 billion rubles, an amount comparable to that which the director comfortably collected without powerful competitors. February–March is a "fairy tale". All this makes us reject skepticism and take seriously his film adaptation of "War and Peace," which will be released in a year — and also not during the New Year holidays, but practically on the release dates of "Fairy Tales." Already, the entire Runet is enthusiastically discussing the film's cast, and the collections of the last two releases prove that Andreasyan has established contact with the audience. Russia wants to watch his movies and prefers them to any other. "War and Peace" may become another sensation.

The comedies were no laughing matter

While the fairy tales were fighting for a place in the hearts of the family audience, there was another battle going on nearby, smaller, but also serious. The Battle of Russian comedies, released by March 8th. The winner was "New Mother-in-law", she has 170 million rubles and the third place at the box office of the weekend. The comedies "Tenderly to yourself", 5th place, 71 million rubles, and the almanac "Tulips", which was just a little behind it, with a galaxy of Russian media stars and a concept like "Christmas Trees", worked quite well. He has 67 million rubles and the 6th place, but the film got into the top 5 novelties. The remaining films at the box office did not reach the threshold of 50 million rubles.

The American ironic thriller "The Heir" is in fourth place in the Russian box office, it has 91 million rubles. He was clearly aiming for the laurels of the "Maid" who was slowly leaving the top, but the potential of this release is much lower. Even without obvious competitors, it worked weaker.: "The Maid" earned 136 million rubles at the start, even for a regular weekend in mid-January, and now its total box office is approaching 1.4 billion. The distributor of the two releases is the same, Volga, but, as you know, the company has made major changes — and this immediately affected the "academic performance", and even the relative success of the "Heir" is largely determined by the part of the team that left Volga. What will happen next with one of the main Russian distributors (so far) is one of the main intrigues of this year in the Russian film distribution.