“We have experienced seasonal ups and downs for many years, usually with a weak spring and a strong fall”, said Stine Helgeland, Executive Director, Promotion & International Relations at the Norwegian Film Institute. “This year it is even worse, with the lowest market share in many years for Norwegian films so far. The fall is however exceptionally strong, with five family films based on well-known material and with big commercial potential, as well as the first disaster movie, The Wave, which I am sure will flood the box office – among others,” she said.
Helgeland predicts that Norwegian films will still end up the year with a 20% market share, but she believes that the market should have been even higher, had local films been spread more evenly throughout the year. “Spring and summer went by without a single Norwegian children’s’ film and now they come out on top of each other – also competing with strong international films. But we stress that it is the producer’s and distributor’s responsibility to find the best release date for their films,” she notes.
SF Film’s head of Theatrical, Åge Hoffart who oversees the release, between August and October, of the documentary Rebels by Kari Anne Moe, the children’s film Casper & Emma on Safari, the comedy The Wendy Effect and Joachim Trier’s Louder than Bombs, says the risks are too high in the spring and summer to release mainstream titles.
“Norway is very special when it comes to summer. It may be the craving for vitamin D, but somehow every Norwegian wants to stay outdoors when the sun is shining. This makes it a big risk to release films during that period, and it is even worse for children films. No decent Norwegian would bring their children to cinema if it is a sunny day in May, June or July. It would be exposing themselves to a social risk, their neighbours would think they are crazy or child molesters...This may sound like a joke, but it is the reality here - it is simply too risky to release a film which is not an American blockbuster aiming at teenagers during the summer. That is the reason why we did not release Louder Than Bombs after Cannes, and why we did not release Casper & Emma on Safari before early September.”
Nordisk Film has an equally strong line up of four titles scheduled for release between August and December: the disaster film The Wave and three family films Doctor Proctor Bubble in the Bathtub, The Christmas King and Solan & Ludvig-The Big Cheese Race.
Morten Christoffersen, Head of Nordisk Film Norge’s Theatrical operations says: “There is of course a risk for cannibalisation in the upcoming period, but we have, in consultation with other distributors, tried to spread the films as well as possible this last period. A summer release is always a risk because of the weather. We would have liked to release some of our titles during the spring, but none of them were completed in time.”
He concludes:“ It will be a race, but I am very pleased that the Norwegian cinema audience will have many good and broad Norwegian movies to see in the upcoming period.”
For the full line up of Norwegian film releases in the fall, check: www.nfi.no