Paul Fenech has built up quite a cult following with his movies and TV series in the past 14 years but Fenech fans must have had other distractions last weekend.
How else to explain the relatively tame opening of the director-actor-writer’s latest opus, Fat Pizza vs Housos?
The comedic battle of thongs, chainsaws, bikies and pizzas, which stars Fenech, Johnny Boxer, Maria Venuti and Elle Dawe, with cameos from Nick Giannopoulos, Kyle Sandilands and Angry Anderson, rang up $280,000 on 121 screens and $296,000 with previews.
Minus previews, that’s 46% below the 2012 debut of Housos vs Authority, which grabbed $526,000 on 151 screens and wound up earning $1.35 million.
It’s dubious whether anyone chose to go to the second weekend of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay- Part 1, rather than the caper set in the infamous housing commission suburb of Sunnyvale.
But Transmission Films’ Andrew Mackie tells IF, “We were on fewer screens this time and Hunger Games is still looming over the market, which wasn't a factor last time. We're actually pretty happy with this result for a sequel."
In cinema terms the Fenech phenomenon peaked with Fat Pizza in 2003, which cooked up $3.6 million, but there is a healthy home entertainment market for his works.
Fat Pizza vs Housos did resonate better in some locations than others. Bob Parr, program manager at Wallis Cinemas, observes, “Of the sites we booked, Griffith was good, the No. 2 film after Hunger Games. We booked it at Alice Springs which has similar demographics, and it took one-quarter as much as Griffith.”
Parr adds, "I didn't see a lot of publicity but they (the filmmakers) did a lot of work on it."
Meanwhile, another Aussie title of a very different tone, When the Queen Came to Town, opened in limited sessions on 23 screens, mostly in regional towns.
Director Maurice Murphy’s feature-length documentary, which chronicles the 26-year-old monarch’s first visit to Australia 60 years ago, took an estimated $7,800.
Umbrella Entertainment’s Richard Moore was quick to point out the film was only booked for matinees and should not be compared to any other Aussie films in the market. Beyond that, his only comment was, “Well, every distributor will always want more."
Parr says, “The Queen… was only playing a couple of sessions per day. I thought it would be reasonable for the older audience who always complain there aren’t enough films for them. My Old Lady is the strong one for them at the moment."