👥 Shadow Distribution Retains Box Office Lead in Russia

According to estimates by Kinobusiness (Bulletin of the Film Distributor), the discrepancy between the official EAIS state ticketing database and distributor-reported figures reached 108 million rubles. This amount represents the estimated volume of the shadow screening sector for the past weekend, down 12.2% from the previous week. Meanwhile, total box office grosses for the top 20 films in Russia reached 431 million rubles (639 million rubles including CIS territories), marking an impressive 120.5% increase compared to the same period last year.

Among official releases, domestic comedy To Grandfather’s Village 2 held the top spot, earning 76 million rubles in its second weekend (bringing its cumulative total to 228 million rubles with 581,000 admissions). The musical biopic Michael continued its strong theatrical trajectory: in its ninth week of release, the film pulled in 58.4 million rubles, pushing its cumulative gross to 2.115 billion rubles. This achievement secures its position as the sixth highest-grossing foreign release in Russian box office history, surpassing Zootopia and Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

Other major official titles also sustained strong box office presence. The horror feature Evil Dead: Inferno generated 136 million rubles across two weekends, while the comedy hit Serf 3 expanded its earnings to 1.080 billion rubles in its seventh week. The top-performing newcomer of the frame was the family feature My Wild Friend: Returning Home, debuting in sixth place with 27.9 million rubles. Rounding out the lower half of the top ten were box office holdovers Obsession (473 million rubles over 10 weeks) and Behind the Reality (748 million rubles over 8 weeks), with Nicolas Winding Refn’s new horror feature Her Private Hell closing out the chart in tenth place with 8 million rubles.