The FINANCIAL — In less than one week, the Tbilisi cinema Amirani managed to earn GEL 30,000 from selling movie tickets of Twilight Saga: New Moon, the full amount that it actually cost them to buy the screening rights for the film and launch advertising campaign. Daily number of movie watchers is up to 1000.
“The movie has been showing in the cinema for more than one week already but people are still finding it hard to get tickets without prior reservation,” Beka Goshadze, Marketing Director of Rustaveli and Amirani cinemas, told The FINANCIAL.
“Against the background of Twilight’s popularity, the sequel is generally showing well in cinemas. It has already made more than it cost the cinema to buy. We cannot yet say how long the movie will be getting shown, it will depend on demand. If we see that demand continues at the same rate then we will launch another advertising campaign for the film,” Goshadze says.
The world premiere of Twilight Saga: New Moon was held on November 20, as internationally Friday is the day of cinema premieres. Georgia was one of the first countries that offered the premiere of New Moon to viewers on Thursday, November 19.
Chris Weitz is the director of New Moon. The story is based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer, written by Melissa Rosenberg. Actors Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner and Robert Pattinson all star in the film.
'New Moon' crosses $200 million
In its eighth day of release, Summit Entertainment's "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" crossed the double-century mark making an estimated $206.1 million, according to Variety magazine.
After Warner Bros.' football drama "The Blind Side" squeezed a few more bodies into the multiplex on Thanksgiving than "New Moon," the vampire sequel took the top spot back on Friday with $17.9 million at 4,042 theaters. That figure reps a 75% drop for "New Moon" from its first Friday.
Though "Blind Side" took second, the Sandra Bullock film continued to benefit from holiday traffic, seeing a 47% uptick from its opening day B.O. with $16.2 million on 3,140 runs. Pic's domestic cume stands at $76.3 million.
Goshadze says that he was surprised to find out on internet forums that there already exists a Twilight fan club in Georgia. “World-marketing activities helped us advertise the product. On many movie websites, in bookshops and on TV there were discussions about Twilight,” he says.
Goshadze says that they launched TV commercials and used websites to advertise the new movie. “We are cooperating with representatives of film and other entertainment websites whose subscribers we consider our target audience,” he notes.
“We considered inviting Robert Pattinson or other actors from New Moon but later, due to several reasons, we weren’t able to manage it. The premiere of New Moon was arranged on the same day in almost every country, so it was too complicated to attract Pattinson or other actors from the film to Georgia. Actually it would have had great affect. Even though we can’t quite afford to bring the actor here during the hubbub surrounding the premier of his new film, in the future when things abroad quieten down a bit it would still be very effective for Georgians if he came here,” Goshadze says.
Another recent box office record movie for Georgian cinemas was the movie 2012.
“We have not yet shown the film New Moon at cinema Rustaveli as the blockbuster 2012 is still largely in demand. The premiere of the film 2012 happened in Georgia on November 12. It has already been two weeks that 2012 has been getting shown in cinemas and demand is so high that we are not planning to stop screening any time in the near future.
“The average cost of screening the film 2012 was GEL 50,000. The film has already made more than it cost the cinema. I cannot tell you in advance which movie was more profitable for us: New moon or 2012, both of them were very popular,” Goshadze says.
Cinemas Rustaveli and Amirani did not increase their ticket prices in 2009. Goshadze says that they chose GEL 12 as the price for a ticket to see the movie 2012 as a symbolic act related to the name of the film. “We first screened it at 12 pm on November 12. To tell the truth this symbolic campaign has been a success and there has been large demand for this screening time,” Goshadze says.
Georgian cinemagoers are offered premiers once a week. Cinema Rustaveli has already started screening the animated film Planet 51. “Before the end of 2009 we still have several new movies to offer our audience. They will be: the Georgian film A girl from a slide; The Men Who Stare At Goats, starring George Clooney; Georgian film What I mostly like; the sequel of Alvin and the Chipmunks; The Box, starring Cameron Diaz; and finally the movie Avatar. The Georgian premiere of Avatar will be on December 18,” says Goshadze.
Because of street demonstrations, Cinema Rustaveli was not working for 5 months. Goshadze says that as well as financial problems the company has faced other problems too. Following the 5 months of our closure our regular customers fell out of the habit of going to the cinema, but we are slowly recovering from this particular problem.
Even though the street demonstrations have come to an end, Goshadze says that there is still a major problem harming the cinema business in Georgia – illegal movie websites. “Most of the movie websites have already uploaded New Moon, but the quality is very low. We are actively cooperating with the representatives of leading Georgian film sites. They promise us not to upload movies which we are going to show, however we do not manage to cooperate with all of them. We frequently see the websites uploading movies before their premiere in world cinemas. They might be managing this by copying them straight from the cutting room.”
“Recently an active anti piracy campaign was launched. This might not completely solve the problem but at least the pressure will be reduced. The negative effect of film piracy that we experience is the same for DVD shops, which import licensed movies from abroad, but are now seeing a dip in sales because of the illegal websites springing up in the country,” Goshadze notes.
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