There’s a huge shakeup but it’s not one anyone would have expected: with three new releases in the charts, two of them made in Germany, the unlikeliest one took the top spot.

After Forever, which is called After Ever Happy in the original version, is the fourth part of this popular young adult romance franchise. The last film, After Love, also took the charts by storm. The recent film was released in 527 theaters, sold 155.000 tickets, and raked in € 1,5 million on its first weekend. Add to that almost 50.000 tickets from the previews, and you have a hit that passed the 200.000-viewer-mark.

This installment concludes the storyline. After Hardin (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) and Tessa (Josephine Langford) met in After Passion and continued their complicated love affair in After Truth and After Love, their turbulent relationship comes to an end. All films are based on the novels by Anna Todd whose inspiration for her hero was not Hero but Harry Styles – we guess, he was busy with Olivia Wilde and her new film – and she began writing the stories as fan fiction. Castille Landon is behind the camera again having shot the last two films back-to-back.

The second debut this week is Die Känguru-Verschwörung (The Kangaroo Conspiracy), another sequel, this one homemade by and with Marc-Uwe Kling about the adventures of a wannabe artist and a communist kangaroo. What was a podcast by Kling became a cult and was adapted for the big screen in 2020. Dimitrij Schaad was hired to play the protagonist who goes on a road trip with the kangaroo who becomes his roommate, almost destroys the dates with his girlfriend, and tries to deal with her mother, a conspiracy theorist and climate change denier—already confused? Well, this is called German humor, and as such, the film was expected to perform better than it did. Released in more theaters (620) than After Forever, it only brought in 110.000 fans for sales below a million.

But the top is mostly under German control with Guglhupfgeschwader in third place in its fourth week where it had held onto the top spot for the past three. Minions 2 – Auf der Suche nach dem Mini Boss (Minions 2 – In Search for the Mini Boss) slipped into fourth place followed by Gesang der Flusskrebse (Where the Crawdads Sing), Bullet Train, Top Gun: Maverick, Thor 4: Love and Thunder and Bibi und Tina – Einfach Anders (Bibi and Tina – Simply Different).

A third German film debuted in tenth place: Mein Lotta-Leben – Alles Tschaka mit Alpaka!. It is impossible to translate the title, so it makes any sense. Suffice it to say, the story is about Lotta, a teenager who goes on a class trip with her friends, who call themselves “The wild rabbits”. Basically, this is Mean Girls on an island with alpacas.

It has to be mentioned that all these new releases are nowhere near as successful as they are in Germany, not even the US-made After Forever. In comparison, two other debuts fell short: Beast – Jäger ohne Gnade (Beast), the Baltasar Kormakur survival shocker starring Idris Elba, opened in 15^th place, and The Invitation – Bis dass der Tod Uns Scheidet (The Invitation), the horror thriller that is the number one of the US-charts, only made it to 19^th.

All in all, almost 900.000 sold tickets amounted to € 8,2 million. Better than August of the last two years but a third less than August of 2019.