“AUSTRALIA” BECOMES BAZ LUHRMANN’S BIGGEST MOVIE EVER!”
HOME-GROWN EPIC ENJOYS PHENOMENAL BOX OFFICE RESULTS DURING THE HOLIDAY PERIOD
Twentieth Century Fox is proud to announce that on New Year’s Day 2009, AUSTRALIA, surpassed MOULIN ROUGE!’s impressive Australian box office record of A$27.7M to become the most successful Baz Luhrmann film of all time in his home country.
The outstanding cume to date is A$28.8M and has been achieved in just 5 ½ weeks, compared to 24 weeks for MOULIN ROUGE!, and faster than most of the major blockbusters of 2008 such as MAMMA MIA (8 weeks), QUANTUM OF SOLACE (6 weeks), SEX IN THE CITY (15 weeks), INDIANA JONES & THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (7 weeks). The film is on track to sail past the significant milestone of A$30 million this week.
AUSTRALIA enjoyed exceptional results over the holiday season, grossing A$5.4 million between Boxing Day and January 4th, up a huge +44 % from the previous 10 days.
Benefitting from strong audience reaction, the film is now in its 7th week of release and still playing widely across the country at more locations than any other film in the market place, including the recent openers THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, MADAGASCAR 2 and BEDTIME STORIES.
Greater Union’s National Film Manager, Bill McDermid said “AUSTRALIA continues to perform strongly across Greater Union Cinemas with the circuit recording a 10% increase in ticket sales over the weekend. An epic film such as this one has proven to be one of the most popular films to see in our luxury cinema offering Gold Class, with sessions continually selling out, even six weeks into release. Positive word of mouth in our regional cinemas is driving excellent attendances. It’s still the number one film in our cinemas in Canberra, Toowoomba, Cairns and Mackay. With the amount of film product releasing at this time of year, it is a challenge to give each film the number of sessions they deserve.
However AUSTRALIA continues to bring in strong box office results due to the demand by all Australians to see the film and as such, it will continue to be programmed into our cinema for the foreseeable future.”
Twentieth Century Fox Australia’s Marketing Director, Marc Wooldridge said “There has been a lot of media speculation about the performance of AUSTRALIA at the local box office, and we feel it’s time to set the record straight. The film has just surpassed SEX IN THE CITY at the box office and in the next week or so, will out gross MAMMA MIA, INDIANA JONES and QUANTUM OF SOLACE. AUSTRALIA has continued to do impressive business and the attendance over the holiday period in particular was sensational - well above industry expectations. By the end of its run, AUSTRALIA is going to be the 2nd highest grossing film of the last 12 months, behind THE DARK KNIGHT. The people of Australia have spoken, with close to 3 million cinema goers having seen the film already, we anticipate the very positive trend to continue over the coming weeks.”
Overseas, AUSTRALIA also continues to have an excellent run earning an impressive cume to date of US$82.7m. The film remains at the #1 position in key territories including Germany, Spain, Denmark, Sweden in its second week of release and #2 in France, Austria and New Zealand.
SOURCE: 20th Century Fox Press Release, January 5th 2008