An anime Japanese movie, One Piece Film: Red, dominated the Italian theatrical box office for the week ending November 6, 2022.  Italian La stranezza (Strangeness) by Roberto Andó, top film the previous week, had to bow to animation and step down to the second place. Red earned Euros 203,133 in its debut week (approx the same amount in US dollars), with a record number of 26,774 paying moviegoers. La stranezza, about Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello (played by Toni Servillo), grossed 71,000 euros, with a total of 3.2 million since its release.

On the podium – for third place – another Italian production, about painter Caravaggio: L’ombra di Caravaggio, directed by Michele Placido, with an all-star cast lead by Riccardo Scamarcio, Isabelle Huppert, and Micaela Ramazzotti, grossed 55.071 euros (total 747,766since its release two weeks ago after its debut at the Festa del Cinema of Rome).

At number 4 is action fantasy Black Adam, with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, which waned down to a meager euros 34,000 gross, after a very good run and a total of 4.7 million euros earned in its monthlong release. David O. Russell Amsterdam clinched at N.5 with 24,500 euros and a 970,000 total.

Another art-inspired film follows in the ranking: Munch: Loves, Ghosts and Lady Vampires), a documentary directed by Michele Mally about the Norwegian painter, debuted decently at N.7 grossing 23.000 euros. After Swedish Triangle of Sadness (14.777 euros, 443,000 total), one more art based as well as another animation, Russian The Nutcracker and The Magic Flute, performed OK at N.8 with 13,000 euros and a total gross of over half a million euros. Rounding up the top 10 chart are Francesca Archibugi’s choral drama Il colibrì (the Hummingbird), with Francesco Favino, Nanni Moretti, and Kasia Smutniak (11,000 euros, and a good – for Italian standards – total 2.8 million since its release) and gay rom-com Bros  (total 136,000 since its release last week).

A quick survey of the winners of the season (August-November) at Italian theaters: Minion 2 (USA) dominated with E 14 million grosses, followed by Black Adam (4.7 M), Strangeness (3.1 M), the re-release of Avatar (3 M), Bullet Train (2.8), Il Colibri’, Ticket to Paradise, DC League of Super Pets, Halloween Ends and Don’t Worry Darling, all US production (with the exception of Il Colibri’), all earning about 2 M euros.

Nanni Moretti, Italian director/actor/producer, and exhibitor (he owns a movie theater in Rome) lamented the state of Italian attendance at movie theaters in a recent interview to daily La Repubblica: “My theater – Sacher – has been losing 50,000 euros a year the last few years, and I don’t know how long I will be able to afford this continuous loss,” he said. “Italy is producing a record number of films, many of them unworthy, the majority will never see the light of the screen. People are losing faith and trust in the quality of what’s available, they are not motivated to get out and go to the movie theaters: they’d rather stay home and watch what’s available on the streaming platforms. We need better quality, sure, but also an injection of enthusiasm, from us, from the media, from the critics, from everybody. Good films deserve to be watched in a theater.”