As stated last week, Italy’s box office revenues, with the summer on its way, rely solely on blockbuster movies. A trend that has been confirmed with the highly-anticipated Top Gun: Maverick, which premiered on May 21 and 22 in The Space movie theaters. The film managed to call in as many as 100,000 people and raised more than € 800,000. The film’s release in all theaters is set for May 25, and the success of the preview will, in all likelihood, be confirmed. But there is also another novelty, and this time it comes as a pleasant surprise for domestic productions: Esterno Notte – Part 1 by Marco Bellocchio. The film is the first “act” of Marco Bellocchio’s new 6-episode series that will arrive on Rai Uno in the fall after the theatrical release of a second part, scheduled for June 9.

Esterno Notte recounts from the outside the many characters involved in the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, an Italian statesman and a prominent member of the Christian Democracy which served as Prime Minister from December 1963 to June 1968 and from November 1974 to July 1976. On March 16, 1978, he was kidnapped by the far-left terrorist group Red Brigades and killed after 55 days of captivity, in one of Italy’s darkest pages of history, which still today leaves many questions unsolved. The film took in € 204,200, placing third in the Italian box office ranking. And if the first place is still occupied by Doctor Stange in the Multiverse of Madness – the Marvel film directed by Sam Raimi which has exceeded € 12 million in total since the day of its release on May 4 – next week will probably see the latter drop in position, leaving the top step of the podium to Tom Cruise. Decidedly less relevant, however, are the results of the other films on the list provided by Cinetel, the platform that collects the revenues from all the Italian movie theaters.

Just to make a few examples Fantastic Beasts – The Secrets of Dumbledore – which managed to surpass 8.3 million in total – this week couldn’t make more than € 80,377, while Downton Abbey II – A New Era barely surpassed the total grossing of one million euros one month after its release, and this week took home € 44,811. The last week of May, which will see the Italian release of a number of films presented at the Cannes Film Festival, such as Mario Martone’s Nostalgia, set in Naples and starring Pierfrancesco Favino, may be able to lift the struggling domestic box office. Nostalgia tells the story of Felice (Favino), a man who returns after a 40-year absence to his homeland, rediscovering his neighborhood and coming to terms with a past that haunts him. From Cannes comes interesting news also, about the world of on-demand cinema. The Italian producers of Minerva Pictures presented during the festival Movieitaly a streaming platform designed to offer audiences in the United States and Canada the best of the Italian filmography of yesterday and today.