The audience’s reluctance to go to the cinema did not save Iranian cinema with ‘Bucharest’ either
Even Atiyabi’s timing didn’t work. It was supposed to boost the box office with the release of comedies by Masoud Atiyabi, as has been the trend for the past two years, but this did not happen with ‘Bucharest’.
While in the past two months, no film that its producers believed had commercial success potential was released, and social conditions have turned going to the cinema into an outdated tradition, ‘Bucharest’ was released with the intention of warming up the box office. This is the result of its first six days of public screening: 30,793 viewers and sales of 1,026,778,000 Tomans.
A weak opening for a comedy featuring actors like Pejman Jamshidi, Hossein Yari, Hadi Kazemi, Amir Hossein Arman, and Babak Karimi.
Of course, a weak start in Atiyabi’s films has a precedent. ‘Dynamite’ also came to the screens in July 2022 after a long hiatus, and its initial days’ sales were not very good, especially since its release coincided with a new wave of COVID-19, and before that, it had been a long time since many people went to the cinema.