🍿 Minions Top the Russian Box Office

Unofficial box office revenues rose 10.9% week-over-week, with the animated blockbuster Minions & Monsters serving as the primary driver of grey-market receipts.

Among official releases, the family comedy Grandpa’s Village 2 claimed the top spot, earning 101 million rubles ($1.1M) from 251,000 admissions in its opening frame. The picture became the thirteenth domestic release of the year to cross the 100-million-ruble milestone in its debut weekend. Although the sequel trailed the opening performance of the original installment (143 million rubles), it comfortably outpaced the debut of the Wait-For-It sequel (57.8 million rubles). Project producer Georgy Malkov acknowledged fierce competition from the pirated sector but expressed confidence in the release’s long-term playability throughout the summer season, anticipating strong word-of-mouth and sustained weekday legs.

The weekend’s landmark achievement came as Serf 3, the third installment in Klim Shipenko’s hit franchise, crossed the 1-billion-ruble threshold, bringing its cumulative gross to 1.021 billion rubles from 2.163 million viewers. The picture became the first Russian film in history to breach the billion-ruble mark specifically during a summer theatrical run. In terms of admissions, the project has already entered the top five highest-attended domestic summer releases, trailing only Night Watch, High Security Vacation, Baba Yaga Saves the World, and the first Grandpa’s Village.

Holding steady in third place was the musical biopic Michael, which added another 61.8 million rubles to its tally. Crossing the 2-billion-ruble milestone in its eighth week of release, the title surpassed Now You See Me (1.925 billion rubles) to become the eighth highest-grossing foreign film in Russian box office history. Michael’s cumulative audience reached 3.7 million viewers, edging past the final attendance figures of Bohemian Rhapsody (3.683 million admissions).

Rounding out the top charts:

• The horror feature Evil Dead: Inferno debuted with 61.2 million rubles (116,000 admissions);
• The adventure project The Dante Codex added 17 million rubles, bringing its cumulative total to 76 million rubles;
• The foreign animated feature Spiky & Floppy grossed 9.5 million rubles at its launch (28,000 admissions);
• The domestic comedy Totally Vacated earned 9.3 million rubles in its opening weekend (20,000 admissions).

Strong performances were also logged by A24’s horror feature Backrooms (reaching a cumulative 722 million rubles, currently ranking 10th among the highest-grossing films of the year) and Obsession (446 million rubles cumulative). Furthermore, classic re-releases hit theaters: the French drama A Man and a Woman (3.5 million rubles), Hayao Miyazaki’s anime Kiki’s Delivery Service (2.7 million rubles), and the adventure feature The Fall (1.9 million rubles).

The aggregate gross for the top 20 films of the weekend in Russia reached 480 million rubles (expanding to 559 million rubles including CIS countries), marking a 3.5% increase week-over-week and a 90.8% surge compared to the same period last year.