Someone is getting a Bogey soon. Continue reading to learn what it is, how it relates to the German box office, and why it has something to do with the legendary star of Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, and many other Golden Era films whose nickname was ‘Bogey.’

But first: Spider-Man soared with basically zero competition over the second holiday weekend when there were no notable new releases and several theater closures in yet another big country. Almost half of all ticket sales went to Spider-Man: No Way Home. All in all, sales have soared too in comparison with the Christmas weekend.

It was another weekend of extremes. Despite the fact that No Time To Die was hailed as the big potential savior of this last cinematic year – unfairly when you look at the numbers – when you do look at the numbers, the third installment of the red and blue-suited hero starring Tom Holland has made almost double that of James Bond. We are talking worldwide and even before its release in China. Granted, Daniel Craig’s farewell as the world’s most famous spy disappointed in the US and departed the realm of cinema for the obscurity of digital outlets. Compared to that, the success of the Marvel film is even more astounding as it too premiered in one of the most difficult phases of the pandemic.

In Germany itself, it may be harder to catch up to the agent on her majesty’s secret service who is racing his Aston Martin toward the six million mark in theatergoers. Spidey is hard on his (w)heels in overall box office with 391,000 more fans flocking to see it in the past seven days. It is this weekend’s top-grossing film and accounts for approximately half of all top 20, which together have a combined total of 804,652 tickets sold.

The conditions for a halfway successful end-of-year box office were dire after Saxony became the second county after Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to close all movie theaters due to rising Omicron numbers. Matrix Resurrections and West Side Story may have made it into the top three but are overall disappointments. Other than those, there were two animal films, Paw Patrol and the homemade production Die Schule der Magischen Tiere, that reached almost 1.5 million people. There was not one blockbuster opening last week. The only two premieres in the top 10 were niche ‘films’: the New Year’s Eve concert of the Berlin Philharmonic and the live stream of Cinderella from the MET that was shown in a number of cinemas.

So, it was an easy swing for Spider-Man: No Way Home whose cumulative number of tickets has now reached a whopping 2.6 million after only three weeks on the screen. This means that is on its way to getting a Golden Bogey, only the second one since coronavirus upended family fun at the movies. So, what is a Bogey? Invented in 1997, this German film award – official name: Box Office Germany Award, which was shortened to Bogey – is given for a certain number of theatergoers in a specified timeframe. The German trade publication Blickpunkt: Film bestows this prize which is a miniature-sized statuette of, you guessed it, Humphrey Bogart. A Golden Bogey is given for three million tickets in 30 days. There are also bronze Bogeys (one million in 10 days), silver Bogeys (two million in 20 days), platinum Bogeys (5 million in 50 days), and the one that tops them all, the titanium Bogey (10 million in 100 days). And this would not be a worthwhile award if there was not a special prize: the 3D-Bogey for any 3D movie that lures a thousand fans per screen into the cinemas on opening weekend. Only six films have received that one, and all in a two-year span from 2009-2010: Alice in Wonderland, Avatar, Final Destination 4, Clash of the Titans, the Pixar production Up and Resident Evil: Afterlife.