Irish cinemas attracted remarkably high figures this summer helped by the poor weather, writes Michael Dwyer
AFFIRMING THE adage that every cloud has a silver lining, Irish cinemas attracted remarkably high admissions during this summer of discontent with clouds, showers and flooding. Batman and Abba dominated the Irish box office as The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia! racked up over €11 million between them.
Running two hours and 32 minutes, The Dark Knight was the longest summer release, and it lived up to its title, proving to be the darkest Caped Crusader film to date, but audiences were undeterred by either factor.
It undeniably generated a level of morbid interest because it features Heath Ledger - who died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs in January at the age of 29 - in his final completed role. Ledger earned the best reviews of the high-powered cast for his hypnotic, wildly energetic performance as The Joker and is tipped for a posthumous Oscar nomination.
The Dark Knight should pass the €6 million mark at the Irish box office this weekend, ahead of all releases here this year.
However, it may well be overtaken shortly by Mamma Mia!, the exuberant musical with a screenplay strung together from Abba songs.
It features an effervescent Meryl Streep, a diva in dungarees, straw hat and with a singing ability to match her flair for accents, and even though co-star Pierce Brosnan's singing voice sounds closer to William Shatner's, he compensates with urbane charm.
It became so popular that some Irish cinemas showed the "singalong" version with the lyrics on the screen. The Cineworld multiplex in Dublin re-released Lasse Hallstrom's 1977 picture, Abba: The Movie. And the 1992 compilation Abba Gold: Greatest Hits soared back to the top of the CD charts.
The consensus is that women - an often neglected segment of the cinema audience - constituted the majority of admissions for Mamma Mia! Women made up even more of the audience for Sex and the City, featuring the cast of the TV show and explicit close-ups of women's footwear. It took over €4 million at the Irish box office, even though it was not playing in some towns because of a long-running dispute between its distributor and Ireland's largest cinema chain.
Hotly tipped as the biggest blockbuster of the summer, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had a heavily hyped launch at Cannes in May. Although it delivered the goods at the Irish box office, taking over €3.6 million, it had to be content with fourth place.
Now that the schools are back, film distributors are turning towards more serious-minded, adult-orientated fare timed for the awards season that builds towards the Oscars next spring. None of those movies is likely to match the takings of The Dark Knight or Mamma Mia!
Having overtaken Star Wars into second place on the all-time US box office chart, The Dark Knight will pass the $500m mark next week, but it's not in reach of the champion Titanic, which made over $600m.
Given Hollywood's abiding belief that success replicates success, we can expect our movie superheroes to get a whole lot darker in the future - and we can expect more movies prominently featuring women.
To quote a song from Mamma Mia!: Money, money, money Always sunny, in the rich man's world.