Yahoo Autos Venice Film Festival Moves Italian Box Office Needle With Auspicious ‘King of Laughter’ Launch
The Venice Film Festival is exerting a positive impact on the Italian box office where Mario Martone’s “The King of Laughter” (“Qui Rido Io”) got a boost over the weekend from its Lido launch that landed the Toni Servillo-starrer in the number two spot after Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.”
Italy’s box office results this past weekend saw “King of Laughter,” in which Servillo plays Neapolitan theater luminary Eduardo Scarpetta, score €314,840 ($372,000) from 291 screens via 01 Distribution for a €1,079 ($1,276) per screen average. That’s not bad considering that Italian movie theaters are operating at 50% capacity due to COVID-19 health safety measures and that Martone’s pic didn’t win any Venice prizes.
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To put Martone’s “King” post-Venice result into perspective, “Shang-Chi,” in its second Italian frame, pulled €692,791, for a €1,143 ($1,352) per-screen average, and a total €2.7 million ($3.1 million) Italian haul to date via Disney.
“We are happy that audiences are going back to the cinema and that they are loving ‘Qui Rido Io’ which features one of Toni Servillo’s most powerful performances,” tweeted Indigo Film, the pic’s production company. Indigo is best known as the shingle behind Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Great Beauty,” where Servillo famously plays the lead.
Another much more niche Italian film, Andrea Segre’s “Welcome Venice,” which launched via distributor Lucky Red from the independently-run Venice Days section, clocked in at number 10 on Italy’s box office chart on Monday, albeit with a mere €62,016 ($73,400) in ticket sales but from just 48 screens, meaning that some screenings were reportedly sold out. Segre’s pic is about two Venetian brothers who come into conflict over the use of their family home, which one wants to turn into a bed and breakfast to exploit mass tourism.
