MOSCOW, December 24. /TASS/. The number of viewers in Russian cinemas will exceed 56 million by the end of 2018, and Russian movies will hit the box office of 13.5 billion rubles ($196.7 million), the press service of the Russian Cinema Foundation (Fond Kino) told TASS on Monday.
Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky said earlier that the box office of Russian movies has doubled over the last 7 years, while the number of viewers that watched Russian movies exceeded 55 million in 2018.
"On the last weekend of this year, traditional New Year movies will be released - the final part of the "Yelki Posledniye" [Last Christmas Trees] franchise, as well as the animation movie "Tri Bogatyrya i Naslednitsa Prestola" [Three Knight-Errants and the Heir to the Throne], which is the ninth movie in the franchise about epic heroes," the press service said. "According to forecasts, the box office of Russian movies will reach 13.5 billion rubles [$196.7 million] by the end of the year, and the number of viewers will exceed 56 million," the press service added.
The Cinema Foundation said that the box office and number of viewers for Russian movies "have already exceeded 13.1 billion rubles [$190.9 million] and 55 million people respectively, thus beating the record of 2017 - 13 billion rubles and 54.7 million viewers at the end of the year."
In 2018, 8 movies earned more than 1 billion rubles in Russia, the Cinema Foundation said. "Two of them are produced in Russia with the support of the Cinema Foundation. They are "Dvizheniye Vverkh" [Moving Up] with 2.9 billion rubles [$42.2 million] and Lyod [Ice] with 1.4 billion rubles [$20.4 million]. These movies attracted 11.5 million and 6 million viewers respectively," the press service added.