It was another long weekend in Italy (leading to Monday’s “holiday bridge” to Tuesday April 25, which is Liberation Day, celebrating Italy’s liberation from the Nazi occupiers in 1945), bringing good receipts for the films playing at Italian theaters. The phenomenally successful video-game adaptation The Super Mario Bros. Movie (already $1 billion in grosses worldwide) is still enjoying good luck with Italian audiences with a €15,700,000 take (the third best Italian box-office result since the pandemic), helping the group just behind it to run faster. The only films to have fared better than Super Mario Bros. so far in post-Covid pandemic Italy are Avatar 2 (€20,4000,000) and Spider-Man: No Way Home (€25 million).

Nanni Moretti’s awaited new film, Il sol dell’avvenire, had a good debut in second position at the Italian box-office with a week-end grosses of €353,247 and a total just shy of €1 million. Featuring Moretti himself, Margherita Buy and Silvio Orlando, the film is a pastiche of musical, film within a film and political rumination that echoes past works from Moretti such as Palombella Rossa and Aprile. It’s the story of Giovanni (Moretti), an Italian film director in the middle of a personal and professional crisis, who is infuriated by the new Netflix rules of filmmaking, which he abhors. He’s filming a movie set in 1956 in Rome, at the time of both the historically rare snowfall in the city and the Soviet tanks invading Hungary, an event that marked the disillusionment of many Italian leftists towards communism. Everything is wrapped between songs and a repertoire of Moretti’s classic gags: his obsession for shoes, Nutella, Sacher torte and Hollywood musicals, his impatience for people’s hypocrisies and many cultural clichés.

Following the Bardo-style eccentricity of art-house darling Moretti are two Hollywood horrors, Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise [La casa – Il risveglio del male, its Italian title], which grossed €293,741 over the weekend, and Julius Avery’s The Pope’s Exorcist [L’esorcista del male], with €148,322. Fifth place went to the animated Mavka e la Foresta Incantata from Ukraine, which overtook Ben Affleck’s Air, taking it down to sixth place. Rounding up the Top 10 for the weekend are Elizabeth Banks’ thriller Cocaine Bear [Cocainorso,] Rocco Papaleo’s Italian comedy Scordato [out of tune, or forgotten], and the box-office die-hards John Wick 4 and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

Overall, between April 17 and 23, total grosses were €7,599,260 with 1,090,516 single attendances. It’s interesting to compare these figures with the pre-pandemic data: between April 18 and 21, 2019, total grosses were €5,238,323, indicating a 12% market increase in 2023.

Following are the complete Top 10 results provided by Cinetel.it:

1 – THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE– IL FILM: €672,404 – Tot. 15,745,505

2 – IL SOL DELL’AVVENIRE:  €353,247 – Tot. 947,357

3 – LA CASA – IL RISVEGLIO DEL MALE:  €293,741 – Tot. 937,048

4 – L’ESORCISTA DEL PAPA: € 148,322 – Tot. 1,810,653

5 – MAVKA E LA FORESTA INCANTATA: €120,779 – Tot. 226,247

6 – AIR – LA STORIA DEL GRANDE SALTO: €112,033 – Tot. 2,695,079

7 – COCAINORSO: € 99,325 – Tot. 309,515

8 – SCORDATO: €64,367 – Tot. 602,300

9 – JOHN WICK 4: €45,140 – Tot. 5,394,759

10 – DUNGEONS & DRAGONS – L’ONORE DEI LADRI: €40,039 – Tot. 2,620,518