Housos opens across 150 screens
Comedian Paul Fenech’s new film Housos Vs The Authority will have one of distributor Transmission Films’ widest openings for a local picture.
The slapstick comedy based on the SBS TV show will go into cinemas today across 150 screens.
Transmission’s managing director, Richard Payten told Mumbrella’s sister title Encore he was hoping for takings of more than $1m over the film’s run.
Payten said: “At 150 prints, you want to be doing north of a million, so that’s our aim. There is an appetite for the film, and cinemas have been completely supportive of it.”
The film has a solid social media presence with 92,000 likes on Facebook for Housos.
Fenech told Encore: “My brand of humour certainly has plenty of ongoing fans, but Housos has grabbed a whole new fan base.”
SBS has since announced a second season of the TV series. Fenech’s previous feature film, Fat Pizza, based on his SBS series Pizza, took $3m at the local box office in 2003.
Fenech said: “Fat Pizza did really well considering its budget. Pound for pound it was an incredible success. How many Australian films will make seven times their budget? They’re people comedies.”
Transmission also released the 2009 film Charlie & Boots starring Paul Hogan and Shane Jacobson, which grossed approximately $2.5m at the box office, and The King’s Speech, which grossed $32.55m locally.
The other film feature based on a TV show to be released this year is Kath & Kimderella, based on sitcom Kath & Kim. It has so far taken $6m at the box office.
good on you Transmission for taking this one on and giving it such a good release! I hope it does well for you and encourages others to make films for the Aussies who want to go and see this sort of thing. Theres lots of them. What a great time for Australian audiences – really something for everyone!
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Good luck in making anywhere near $1m with this awful movie. Honestly, your real target audience of ‘houso’ people wouldn’t pay for it, they’d pirate it through BitTorrent.
The Houos mob seem to think that their movie will do well because The Castle did well. Sorry to say, The Castle was a gentle and ‘kind’ type of comedy, not this vulgar cheap in your face crap.
I hope Housos opens to near-empty cinemas, is trundled of within a week and becomes the next best thing to straight-to-video release, where it will undoubtedly make its money back through the long-tail as it’s exactly the type of DVD crap which so many low-brow and no-brow housos would rent to go with their cheap Dominos pizza and six-pack of beer.
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