Summer movies have suffered big losses so far this year after failing to draw big crowds at the box office, with most movies bringing in less than LE1 million during the first week of release.
This year’s summer movies included “Cry of an Ant”, starring Amr Abdul Galil, and “Al-Fagoumy”, starring Khaled Sawy.
Meanwhile, the movie “Samy Oxide al-Carbon”, starring Hany Ramzy, is the season’s glimmer of hope after grossing LE260,000 on Friday, the highest daily revenue achieved by an Egyptian film this year. Nonetheless, this revenue was down by 60 percent compared to last summer.
The movie “Cry of an Ant”, directed by Sameh Abdel Aziz, was the second highest grossing movie, with a box office revenue of LE473,000 in its first week.
"Al-Fagoumy" came in third place, with box office revenues of only LE273,000 in its opening week, after showing in 60 movie theaters.
Three new movies will be showing soon at movie theaters nationwide: “The Boat”, starring Yousra Lozy and Raghda Ahmed Hatem and directed by Othman Abu Laban; “The Elephant in the Napkin”, starring Talaat Zakaria; and "Dokki ya Mazzika”.
Mohsen Baghdady, the distributor for "Dokki ya Mazzika” and head of the Nasr company, said the current low revenues were related to the economic and security situation in the country, as well as the curfew hours, which have put an end to the after-midnight shows.
“The success of Hany Ramzy's movie is due its comic nature, since most people now want to separate themselves from events," said Bahdady, "which is what had a negative impact on the revenues of the other movies.”
“There is no comparison between last summer’s and this summer’s revenues, since this season’s movies only grossed 30 percent of last summer’s revenues,” he said.
He went on to explain that the quality of the movies shown this season may also be a major cause for the decline of revenues. Most of them were small-budget movies without a box office star, unlike last summer, he said.
Translated from the Arabic Edition
